ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UPSALIENSIS Studia Iranica Upsaliensia

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Narrative Structure of Wakhi Oral Stories

Jaroslava Obrtelová

Abstract The Wakhi people live in the remote areas of the high Pamir mountains. Their original home-land is situated in the Wakhan Corridor in the Badakhshan region, and is divided by the bor-der between southeast Tajikistan and nordeast Afghanistan. They also inhabit the mountain-ous areas in northern Pakistan and western China. The Wakhi language belongs to the Pamir sub-group of Eastern Iranian languages and is spoken by about 58,000 people in the above-mentioned four countries.

The discourse of Wakhi as spoken in Tajikistan has not yet been the subject of analysis. This study is an attempt to identify the features of the fundamental narrative structure of Wakhi oral stories. The analysis of narrative genres recorded in the Wakhan valley in Tajiki-stan is based on Labov & Waletzky’s (1967) and Labov’s (1972 and 1997) models.

The first part examines the properties of temporal sequence and narrative clauses, and con-cludes that two sets of narrative tense-aspect forms are found throughout Wakhi oral narra-tives: simple past tense for eyewitness accounts, and non-past alternating with perfect for non-eyewitness narratives.

In the second part, the overall structure of the Wakhi oral narrative is examined, to define the properties of each of the narrative stages (abstract, orientation, complicating action, evalu-ation, resolution, and coda) and of the transitions between them. A separate chapter is dedi-cated to evaluation, which may be present explicitly, as a comment made by the narrator by stepping out of the narrative frame, or as part of the narrative frame, either embedded in direct speech or expressed implicitly using a range of internal evaluative devices.

The final part starts a discussion on further aspects of narrative as presented by Labov (1997), namely reportability, credibility, causality, the assignment of praise and blame, and objectivity, that can direct possible future research beyond the narrative frame and into areas of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology.

The study is complemented by a corpus of twenty-one transcribed, glossed, and translated Wakhi stories, representing various narratives genres described in the study.

Keywords: Wakhi, discourse, oral narratives, Pamir languages, text corpus © Jaroslava Obrtelová 2017 ISSN 1100-326X ISBN 978-91-513-0150-1 urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-331361 (http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-331361) Printed in Sweden by Kph Trycksaksbolaget AB, Uppsala 2017

To the Wakhi people

Contents

Acknowledgements ....................................................................................... 15

1. Introduction ............................................................................................... 17

2. Wakhi language and oral culture............................................................... 23 2.1. Alphabet and transcription ................................................................ 23 2.2. Overview of Wakhi verb tense and aspect system ............................ 26 2.3. Oral narrative genres ......................................................................... 30

3. Methodology ............................................................................................. 33 3.1. Presentation of the data ..................................................................... 33 3.2. Methodology – Labov’s model ......................................................... 34

4. Temporal sequence ................................................................................... 39 4.1. Narrative head ................................................................................... 39

4.1.1. Texts collected by Russian scholars .......................................... 47 4.2. The discourse functions of verb forms .............................................. 49

4.2.1. Stories told in non-past .............................................................. 49 4.2.2. Stories told in past tense ............................................................ 51

4.3. Narrative clauses ............................................................................... 51

5. Overall narrative structure ........................................................................ 55 5.1. Abstract ............................................................................................. 55 5.2. Orientation ......................................................................................... 56

5.2.1. Verbs in orientation ................................................................... 65 5.3. Complicating Action and Resolution ................................................ 66

5.3.1. Marking the transition between Orientation, Complicating Action and Resolution ......................................................................... 67 5.3.2. Structure and syntactic properties of Complicating Action ....... 72

5.4. Coda .................................................................................................. 76

6. Evaluation and evaluative devices ............................................................ 81 6.1. External evaluation ............................................................................ 81 6.2. Embedded evaluation ........................................................................ 85 6.3. Internal evaluation ............................................................................. 86

7. Further aspects of narrative ....................................................................... 93

7.1. Credibility.......................................................................................... 94 7.2. Causality .......................................................................................... 100 7.3. The assignment of praise and blame ............................................... 102

8. Conclusion .............................................................................................. 105

A. Text Corpus ............................................................................................ 109

References ................................................................................................... 249

Maps and Tables

Map 1. Map of Tajikistan and surrounding countries. ........................ 17 Map 2. Villages in the Wakhan valley ............................................... 18 Table 1. List of Narratives .................................................................. 21 Table 2. Wakhi Vowel Chart .............................................................. 24 Table 3. Wakhi Consonant Chart ....................................................... 24 Table 4. Wakhi Alphabet .................................................................... 25

Abbreviations

1 first person 2 second person 3 third person - affix boundary = clitic boundary … incomplete sentence […] intentionally omitted/skipped part [ ] additional explanatory note in free translation ( ) implied information not explicitly stated in the original text > turns into ABL ablative case (also genitive or source) ACC accusative case (also called oblique2, focused oblique) AD Anecdote [in text corpus] adr form of address adj adjective adv adverb AN Anvil [in text corpus] BO Boboantar [in text corpus] COMP comparative CONF confirming particle CW Central Wakhan DAT dative case (also goal) DB Dog and Bear [in text corpus] DEM1 demonstrative 1st degree (this – near distance) DEM2 demonstrative 2nd degree (that – middle distance) DEM3 demonstrative 3rd degree (that – far distance)1 DIM diminutive; also occurring as a suffix attaching to verbs DM development marker DR Disrespect [in text corpus] EMP emphatic particle EZ ezafe (linking particle)2 1 In combination with certain prepositions, the demonstratives sometimes acquire adverbial meaning, distinguishing three degrees as well. Thus, the same form can sometimes represent a preposition combined with a demonstrative, and sometimes an adverb, depending on the context. 2 Under the influence of Tajik and Dari, ezafe also occurs in Wakhi. However, it is not a genuine Wakhi construction since Wakhi original word order prevents it.

F female FM From the History of Mirbugha [in text corpus] GF Girl Stolen by Fairies [in text corpus] here1 adverb 1st degree (here – near distance) HS Hazrati Shoh Nosir [in text corpus] HT Hunter [in text corpus] i facultative suffix -i (or its dialectal variant -ǝy)3 IMP imperative IND individuation suffix (also specific, referential indefinite) INF infinitive (also called first infinitive, ending in -ak) IPFV imperfective aspect L&W Labov & Waletzky LW Lower Wakhan M male MB Mirbugha [in text corpus] n noun NEG negative particle NP noun phrase OBL oblique case PF perfect PL plural PoD point of departure PPF pluperfect PROH prohibitive particle prt particle PST (simple) past tense PTCP participle Q question particle REL relative particle SB Shodmonbig [in text corpus] sfx so-far unidentified suffix SE Story from the Early Soviet Era [in text corpus] SG singular SK Story about the Kidnapped Girl [in text corpus] SM Shermalik [in text corpus] SOV subject-object-verb (constituent order) SBJV subjunctive TB Tirbar [in text corpus] there2 adverb 2nd degree (there – middle distance) there3 adverb 3rd degree (there – far distance) TO Two Old Men [in text corpus]

3 -i /-ǝy attaches to a past tense stem when no personal (subject marking) clitic is attached to the stem. It is not a person-marking suffix and its exact semantic function has yet to be discovered.

TS Tirbarshakh [in text corpus] UW Upper Wakhan VG Vaghd [in text corpus] VNoun Verbal noun (also called second infinitive, ending with -n) WA Water [in text corpus] WC Wolf and Calf [in text corpus] WV Wolves [in text corpus] (ru) Russian word/expression4 (taj) Tajik word/expression5

4 The transcription reflects the pronunciation of the speaker, and does not reflect the correct Russian orthography or pronunciation. 5 The transcription reflects the pronunciation of the speaker, and does not reflect the correct Tajik orthography or pronunciation. Sometimes, the distinction between borrowed words in Tajik that have made their way into the Wakhi language and expressions quoting Tajik sources is not clear. Therefore, the sign (taj) will only be used in obvious cases.

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Acknowledgements

This study is an adapted version of a thesis submitted for the completion of an MA degree in Field Linguistics in 2013, validated by Middlesex University in the UK.

First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the supervisors of my MA thesis, Professor Howard Jackson and Daniel Paul, PhD, who guided me with helpful and constructive comments during the writing process. I would also like to thank Professor Carina Jahani, who is supervising my current research and who made this publication possible through a printing grant from the Editorial Committee of Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.

My greatest thanks go to my dear Wakhi friend Raihon Sohibnazarbekova, a Wakhi scholar who has been my language teacher and cultural guide, as well as a great collaborator in language data elicitation and linguistic analysis. Raihon accompanied me on the language data collection trips in Wakhan and together with her husband Sobir was a great help in organizing my travel, ac-commodation and contact with the Wakhi community.

I must express a special thanks to the Wakhi linguists and educators who helped me during the work with the language data and analysis. Dilangez Khudoyorova helped me a lot with the preliminary transcription of the col-lected stories. I greatly appreciate the help of Munavvar Bahriev who checked and corrected my translations of the Wakhi stories into English and answered many of my specific linguistic questions. I greatly value the time for language consultations given to me by the university professors Azizkhon Mirboboev and Saodatsho Matrobov.

I am also very thankful to the entire Wakhi community in the Wakhan val-ley, as well as those living in Dushanbe, the capital city of Tajikistan, for their hospitality, time and willingness to share their stories, and for allowing me to make these stories available to the academic community. I would especially like to thank the people in the village of Vrang in the Wakhan valley and in Ishkashim, who hosted me and my husband during the research trips.

I am not able to mention everyone across the whole Wakhan valley who shared their stories with me and to whom I am immensely thankful. Let me therefore name at least the narrators of the stories appearing in this book: Mirzoev Odinamamad, Shaydoev Saifiddin, Sultonbekova Ayotbegim, Pahla-vonov Abulfayz, Odinabegov Juma, Pahlavonova Khushol, Nozirov Ravshan, Peruzshoev Sarvarkhon, Mirbozkhonova Nuriniso, Nematov Mabatkhon, Mu-minova Davlatbegim, Taygunshoeva Gulnora and Lukaeva Bibimoh.

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My many thanks also go to Tajik National university, especially to my Ta-jik language teachers Docent Dilmurod Homidov and Docent Zhilo Gulnaza-rova, who showed great interest in my research and encouraged me in many ways during my research by providing a platform for publishing my findings in the University Journal and by facilitating linguistic discussions and meet-ings with specialists and students.

Finally, I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to my husband Jan, who faithfully and tirelessly accompanied me on all my research trips, and who has been my technical and moral support during the long travels, during the fieldwork, as well as in the final stage of sitting at the desk and writing.

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1. Introduction

Wakhi (also called Khik, Khikwor) is one of the minority languages spoken in the area of the Pamir Mountains. It belongs to the Southeastern branch of Eastern Iranian in the Indo-Iranian family, which is a branch of Indo-Euro-pean. Wakhi is spoken by about 58,000 speakers (Lewis et al. 2016) in four countries: Tajikistan (15,000 speakers), Afghanistan (17,000 speakers), Paki-stan (20,000 speakers) and China (6,000) speakers). UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger gives a total number of 75,000 Wakhi speakers living in the Badakhshan region in Tajikistan, Badakhshan Province in Af-ghanistan, northern Pakistan and Tashkurghan district of Xinjiang Province in China (Moseley 2010).6 The original homeland of the Wakhis is the Wakhan Corridor in the southeast Tajikistan in the Gorno-Badakhshan region and northeast Afghanistan in Badakhshan Province.

Map 1. Map of Tajikistan and surrounding countries. Source: Wikimedia Commons Atlas of the World (edited with indication of the Wakhi settlements in the Wakhan valley added by the author)7

In the Wakhan in Tajikistan three dialectal variants have been identified related to their geographical positions: the Lower Wakhan villages (LW) from Namatgut to Shitkharv, the Central Wakhan villages (CW) from Zmudg to

6 Information about Wakhi updated 11th September 2015. 7 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Ti-map.gif

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Drizh, and the Upper Wakhan villages (UW) from Shirgin to Ratm (Steblin-Kamensky 1999:10). These dialectal variants in Tajik Wakhan are sometimes identified as a western dialect for LW, central dialect for CW and eastern di-alect for UW. The dialectal differences are not significant, and all three dia-lectal variants are mutually intelligible across the Wakhan valley. However, for the sake of future linguistic and discourse analysis, the dialectal location will be indicated for each story in the present corpus.

Map 2. Villages in the Wakhan valley

Several descriptions of the Wakhi language are available. Most have fo-cused on describing Wakhi phonetics and grammar with samples of language data. Probably the first attempt to give a sketch of the Wakhi grammar was made as early as 1876 by Shaw. Among the most significant resources, we should mention the work of Russian linguists who published studies between the 1930s and 1970s: Klimchitskiy (1936), Sokolova (1953), Pakhalina (1975) and Gryunberg & Steblin-Kamensky (1976). They focused primarily on the Wakhi language spoken in Tajikistan, although the latter two also comple-mented their studies with material collected in Afghanistan and China. Along-side these publications were studies conducted among Wakhis in northern Pa-kistan by Morgenstierne (1938) and Lorimer (1958). A chapter dedicated to the Wakhi language in The Iranian Languages (Windfuhr 2009) written by Bashir (2009) presents the most recent sketch of Wakhi grammar, taking into consideration the above mentioned previous publications as well as the au-thor’s own field notes from Hunza in northern Pakistan. Equally important is the publication of the Etymological dictionary of the Wakhi language (Steblin-Kamensky 1999). The first study dedicated to Wakhi oral narrative forms was undertaken by Mock (1998), who studied the discursive forms of the construc-tion of reality among Wakhis in northern Pakistan.

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The present book, however, is the first study of the discourse of Wakhi language from a linguistic perspective to analyse oral narratives of the Wakhi language as spoken in the Wakhan valley in Tajikistan.

In this study I will examine various types of Wakhi oral narratives using Labov’s model of narrative structure as a theoretical framework. My goal is to identify the features of fundamental narrative structure typical for the Wakhi language. The chosen method of narrative analysis, i.e. Labov’s model, seems to be a suitable approach for several reasons. My analysis, like those of Labov & Waletzky (1967) and Labov (1972, 1997), is based on oral narratives produced by a large sample of ordinary speakers. It is not based on the pro-duction of a small group of professional storytellers. The collected narratives represent a sample of the language as it is currently spoken across the villages of Wakhan, by speakers of various ages, education and social status. The sec-ond reason is that Labov’s model is not merely a text linguistic analysis; it addresses sociolinguistic aspects, which are important for the discourse anal-ysis of narratives of a minority language that has not yet fully developed a written form and that is spoken among other living and developed languages. The analysis can not only provide a technical description of the features of Wakhi oral narratives, it can also give insight into the cultural values and be-liefs and the use of the language across various age or social groups within the Wakhi community.

This study does not focus primarily on grammatical description, and there-fore it does not present any significant discussion in this area. The terminology regarding the morphological and syntactic properties of the Wakhi language refers to the earlier publications mentioned above. The first part of the book (Chapters 2 and 3) gives only the basic characteristics of the Wakhi language, such as a brief overview of verb tense-aspect forms to the extent that they are relevant for the further discussion on the narrative structure; information about the transcription and alphabet used in the text corpus; and information about Wakhi oral narrative genres (Chapter 2). It is followed by an overview of methodology (Chapter 3).

The second part of the book focuses on the description of the narrative structure in Wakhi oral stories. It starts by examining the basic framework of narrative; i.e., it analyzes the temporal sequence and defines the properties of three types of clauses - narrative, restricted and free clauses (Chapter 4). Chap-ter 5 looks at the overall structure of narratives using Labov’s model consist-ing of the following stages: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evalua-tion, resolution and coda. Chapter 6 addresses the evaluation in more detail and specifically examines the evaluative devices as they appear throughout the Wakhi oral narratives. Chapter 7 discusses further aspects of narrative in Wakhi oral narratives, as proposed by Labov (1997), specifically credibility, causality, and the assignment of praise and blame. This part of the book ends with the Conclusion (Chapter 8).

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The last part of the book (Appendix) presents the text corpus consisting of 21 stories that represent various narrative genres and are analysed using the FieldWorks Language Explorer program (FLEx). These 21 narratives were selected from the full corpus of 46 recorded, transcribed and grammatically analysed oral stories. They are presented in the Wakhi Cyrillic orthography (first line) with the equivalent in International phonetic transcription (second line), gloss (third line) and free translation (fourth line) for each sentence. However, throughout the study (Chapters 4–7), in the examples the Cyrillic orthography form is excluded, it being used only for the full glossed stories in the text corpus in the Appendix. The transcription does not reflect the full representation of prosodic features. However, the orthographic form of the text in the Cyrillic script marks the division of the units by commas and full stops based on intonation and pause. Falling intonation at the end of a logical unit indicates the end of the sentence and is represented by a full stop, while pauses or intonation not falling at the end of a logical unit are represented by a comma. Some sentences in the transcribed and glossed text corpus are thus very long, and some are short, as they reflect the oral expression of the narra-tor. Sentences in the narrative are numbered. In the examples throughout the study, if there is a need to divide long sentences into smaller logical units (clauses) these smaller units will be marked with a letter (e.g. 1a, 1b, 1c as three clauses of sentence 1).

The following table gives the list of narratives in the text corpus in the Ap-pendix with basic information about each of the narratives. Throughout the study, in examples the stories are referred to by ID and sentence number(s). Some examples in the study are taken from the stories not present in the text corpus. In that case they are referred to by the full name of the story and ex-ample number.

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Table 1. List of Narratives Story ID Genre Narrative

Head Location – Gender – Age

1 Anecdote AD Anecdote Non-Past CW – M – 46 2 Anvil AN Eyewitness

account PST CW – M – 91

3 Boboantar BO Traditional story Non-Past CW – F – 81 4 Disrespect DR Traditional story Non-Past LW – M – 50 5 Dog and Bear DB Eyewitness

account retold PST LW – M – 50

6 From the History of Mirbugha

FM Ancestor’s history

Non-Past CW – M – 90

7 Girl Stolen by Fair-ies

GF Eyewitness account

PST CW – F – 47

8 Hazrati Shoh Nosir HS Legend Non-Past CW – M – 91 9 Hunter HT Non-eyewitness

account Non-Past LW – M – 50

10 Mirbugha MB Ancestor’s history

Non-Past CW – M – 90

11 Shermalik SM Traditional story Non-Past UW – F – 85 12 Shodmonbig SB Ancestor’s

history Non-Past LW – M – 80

13 Story about the Kidnapped Girl

SK Historical account

Non-Past CW – M – 52

14 Story from the Early Soviet Era

SE Autobiographic story

PST LW – M – 75

15 Tirbar TB Historical account with eyewitness elements

Non-Past / PF / PST

UW – F – 53

16 Tirbarshakh TS Historical account

Non-Past / PF

UW – F – 85

17 Two Old Men TO Traditional story Non-Past LW – F – 72 18 Vaghd VG Traditional story Non-Past CW – F – 86 19 Water WA Traditional story Non-Past LW – M – 80 20 Wolf and Calf WC Eyewitness

account PST LW – M – 50

21 Wolves WV Eyewitness account

PST LW – M – 50

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2. Wakhi language and oral culture

Until recently Wakhi was classified as a non-written language (Muller et al. 2008). However, there are ongoing efforts to establish orthographies in at least three of the four countries where Wakhis live. Given the different political and historical background of each of the four countries, Wakhi orthography is be-ing developed in Cyrillic (Tajikistan), Latin (Pakistan) and Arabic (Afghani-stan) scripts. Wakhi is an endangered language, but the degree of endanger-ment varies depending on the country, ranging between 6a (Vigorous) and 7 (Shifting) on the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS) scale of endangerment (Ethnologue: Lewis et al. 2016).8

2.1. Alphabet and transcription In 2010–2011 a discussion was held with the Wakhi linguists in Tajikistan on the creation of an alphabet that would be accessible to the Wakhi speakers in the Tajik Wakhan. Factors such as the rich phonetic complexity and socio-linguistic context of the Wakhi language had to be taken into account.9 The outcome of this discussion was a proposal for a Wakhi alphabet based on the Cyrillic script. This new alphabet was tested among Wakhi mother-tongue speakers in 2011. The final form of the Wakhi alphabet10 (see Table 4) was published and used for the first time in a collection of short stories for children Xikwor naqlis zavǝr (Shaidoev 2012). Since 2012, several other Wakhi books have been published in Tajikistan using this alphabet11 and more are being readied for publication in the near future.

All the narratives in the text corpus of this study were transcribed in the above-mentioned Wakhi alphabet. However, for the purpose of this study, in

8 https://www.ethnologue.com/language/wbl 9 A more detailed account of the recent language development activities and the process of creating the Wakhi alphabet and orthography in Tajikistan was presented under the title “Steps being taken to reverse language shift in the Wakhi language in Tajikistan” by Obrtelova & Sohibnazarbekova at the International Symposium on Endangered Iranian Languages (ISEIL), Paris, July 2016. 10 The Wakhi alphabet was created in 2011 in Dushanbe by Obrtelova, J.; Sohibnazarbekova, R.; Saidmamadov, A.; Mirboboev, A.; Matrobov, S.; Ghulomaliev, Sh. 11 Wux diyor ganȷ (Davlatmamadov, 2015), Xikwor zindais (Obrtelova et al. 2016), Cistonis (Matrobov & Sohibnazarbekova, 2016), Mǝtalis (Matrobov & Sohibnazarbekova, 2016), and Asob (Matrobov 2016).

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addition to the Cyrillic script, I use the International phonetic transcription that is based on the Latin script and is used in scientific descriptions of Wakhi by Pakhalina (1975) and Gryunberg & Steblin-Kamensky (1976), as well as by Payne (1989) and Bashir (2009) with slight modifications, where Payne used ɨ instead of ы and Bashir used dz, ts instead of ʒ, c, respectively. Tables 2 and 3 present vowel and consonants charts of Wakhi as it is spoken in Tajikistan. Table 4 gives a full overview of the Wakhi alphabet based on the Cyrillic script and developed in Tajikistan (2011), Wakhi phonemes (an alphabet using Latin script) and their phonetic realizations.

Table 2. Wakhi Vowel Chart

Table 3. Wakhi Consonant Chart

bilabial

labio dental

dental alveolar

alveo palatal

retro-flex

pala-tal

ve-lar

uvular

stops

p t t k q b d d g

affrica-tes

c c c ʒ

frica-tives

f θ s s s x x

v δ z z z ɣ ɣ nasals m n

liquids l r

semi-vowels y w

а

e ə

ы i

o

u

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Table 4. Wakhi Alphabet

Tajik WWaakhi CCyrillic

WWakhi LLatin

IPA example EEnglish

1. А, а АА, а AA, a [ɐ] бар / bar door 2 Б, б ББ, б BB, b [b] бәч / bǝc uncle 3. В, в ВВ, в VV, v [v] вәрз / vǝrz long 4. ВВ,, вв WW, w [w] выш / wыs herb 5. Г, г ГГ, г GG, g [g] гыл / gыl flower 6. ҒҒ,, ғғ ƔƔ,, ɣɣ [ɣ] ғыв / ɣыw cow 7. Ғ, ғ ҒҒ, ғ ƔƔ, ɣ [ʁ] цоғд / coɣd when 8. Д, д ДД, д DD, d [d] дындык /

dыndыk tooth

9. ДД,, дд DD,, dd [ɖ] дох / dox thin 10. Е, е ЕЕ, е EE, e [e] ме / me behold 11. Ё, ё ЁЁ, ё ёщ / yos young 12. ҖҖ, җ ZZ,, zz [ʒ] җарҗ / zarz milk 13. Ж, ж ЖЖ, ж ZZ,, zz [ʐ] кәж / kǝz knife 14. З, з ЗЗ, з ZZ, z [z] зик / zik tongue 15. ЗЗ,, зз ΔΔ, δ [ð] зәғд / δǝɣd daughter 16. И, и ИИ, и II, i [i], [ɪ] исп / isp shoulder 17. Ӣ, ӣ ӢӢ,, ӣӣ шкори /

s kor hunter

18. Й, й ЙЙ, й YY, y [j] зай / δay husband 19 К, к КК, к KK, k [k] [kʰ] каш / kas boy 20. Қ, қ ҚҚ, қ QQ, q [q] қрыт / qrыt qurut

(milk product)

21. Л, л ЛЛ, л LL, l [l], [ɭ], [l]

лворч / lworc

sand

22. М, м ММ, м MM, m [m] мыр / mыr apple 23. Н, н НН, н NN, n [n], [ŋ] нағд / naɣd evening 24. О, о ОО, о OO, o [o], [ɔ] тоқ / toq window 25. П, п ПП, п PP, p [p], [pʰ] палч / palc leaf

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Tajik WWaakhi CCyrillic

WWakhi LLatin

IPA example EEnglish

26. Р, р РР, р RR, r [r], [r] рвор / rwor day 27. С, с СС, с SS, s [s] сыр / sыr cold 28. СС,, сс ΘΘ, θ [θ] син / θin hot 29. Т, т ТТ, т TT, t [t], [tʰ] туғ / tuɣ goat 30. ТТ,, тт TT tt [ʈ] бәт / bǝt clothes 31. У, у УУ, у UU, u [u], [ʊ] пуп / pup grand-

father 32. Ф, ф ФФ, ф FF, f [f] фукс / fuks snake 33. Х, х ХХ, х XX, x [χ] хун / xun house 34. ХХ,, хх XX,, xx [x] хәч / xǝc bread 35. ЦЦ, ц CC,, c [ts] цоғд / coɣd when 36. ЦЦ,, цц ƷƷ, ʒ [dz] панц / panʒ five 37. Ч, ч ЧЧ, ч CC,, cc [tʃ] чван / cwan apricot 38. ЧЧ,, чч CC,, cc [ʈʂ] чәжм / cǝzm eye 39. Ҷ, ҷ ҶҶ, ҷ JJ,, [dʒ] юмҷ / yum flour 40. ҶҶ,, ҷҷ JJ ,, [ɖʐ] ҷорж / orz rubble 41. ЩЩ, щ SS,, ss [ʃ] щач / sac dog 42. Ш, ш ШШ, ш SS,, ss [ʂ] шапт / s apt wolf 43. ЫЫ, ы ЫЫ, ы [ʉ], [ɨ] ыб / ыb seven 44. ƎƎ, ә ƎƎ, ǝ [ə] әт / ǝt open 45. Э, э ЭЭ, э EE, e [e] э врыт / e

vrыt (hey), brother

46. Ю, ю ЮЮ, ю юпк / yupk water 47. Я, я ЯЯ, я ярк / yark work

2.2. Overview of Wakhi verb tense and aspect system In Wakhi the following verb tense-aspect forms have been described: The non-past, also called present-future in Pakhalina (1975), Gryunberg & Steblin-Kamensky (1976) and Bashir (2009), is used for present and future events, and for expressing general truth and regularly repeated events. Ac-cording to Bashir (2009:837), the non-past is also used as a historical present.

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However, as will be shown later (section 4.1, example 2), in narrative contexts the non-past is only used in some genres (non-eyewitness stories). In non-past the verb consists of non-past stem and person-marking verb suffix. In the glossed texts, the non-past is unmarked and is translated into English with the present tense.

Examples a–c12 (a) wuz tǝ xun rǝc-ǝm, tu rǝc-a?

I to house go-1SG you go-Q ‘I am going home, are you going?’

(b) dǝ baor wыr ɣa rǝs -t in spring rain very go-3SG ‘In spring it rains a lot.’ (c) wuz saar d -ǝt diyor rǝc -ǝm I tomorrow to-DEM2 village go -1SG ‘Tomorrow I will go to that village.’

With the aspectual clitic =ǝs (IPFV) the non-past imperfective expresses the immediacy or continuity of the present event, or just simply an event in the present.

Examples d–f (d) yǝm kǝbit-ǝy win =ǝs ? DEM1 dove-ACC see=IPFV ‘Do you see this dove?’ (e) yaw xы kla-rǝk ɣa alaf=ǝs rand ki kla farbi he own ram-DAT much herb=IPFV give that ram fat wos-t

become-3SG ‘He gives his ram a lot of herbs so that the ram becomes fat.’

(f) tu kumȷay=ǝs rǝc -i you where=IPFV go-2SG ‘Where are you going?’

The (simple) past tense (PST) is used for referring to past events or to express anteriority in the subordinate clause to a future event in the main clause. The verb in past tense consists minimally of the past stem. The pronominal subject 12 All examples a–o in 2.2 are taken from Gryunberg & Steblin-Kamensky (1976:624–626) and from Pakhalina (1975:82–84), and have been glossed and translated into English by the author.

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agreement clitics may be attached to the past stem or to another clause con-stituent, in the latter case always occurring prior to the past stem; sometimes the clitic attaches to both. In the 3rd person singular (for which there is no subject-marking pronominal clitic) or when the subject marking pronominal clitic attaches to a constituent other than verb, the past stem often (but not necessarily) ends with -i or its dialectal variant -ǝy. This suffix occurs only in past tense and marks Ø person/number. Its function has not yet been suffi-ciently described and needs further research. In the glossed texts it will be marked as -i.

Examples g–h (g) yi xalg safar reɣd-ǝy, dǝ yi dǝryo lav ɣat-ǝy one man journey go.PST-i to one river bank arrive.PST-i ‘One man went on a journey, he arrived at a river bank.’ (h) yan d-a xun=ǝt ki ɣat=ǝt, yan tǝr xы

then to-DEM3 house=2SG that arrive.PST=2SG then to own cǝbas didiɣ

behind look ‘When you arrive [will have arrived] home, look behind.’

With the aspectual clitic =ǝs the past tense imperfective (PST.IPFV) ex-presses the past events in imperfective, continuous, habitual, or iterative meaning.

Examples i–k (i) dǝ xы diyor ki tu, ar ruz=ǝs tǝ

in own village that be.PST every day=IPFV to ku=ǝs rǝɣd-ǝy

mountain=IPFV go.PST-i ‘When he was in his village, he went to the mountain every

day.’ (j) a ya mum a ya tuɣ-vi=s

EMP DEM3 granmother EMP DEM3 goat-PL.OBL=IPFV δǝɣn-ǝy

milk.PST-i ‘The grandmother (always) milked those goats.’ (k) yaw=ǝs zǝqlay δǝɣd-i dust=ǝs δord-i. he=IPFV little daughter-ACC friend=IPFV have.PST-i ‘He loved the younger daughter.’

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The perfect (PF) is used to express the resultive-stative function, as in Exam-ple (l). It also expresses ‘inferential and mirative senses’ (Bashir 2009:839), as in Example (m). It is used as a non-witnessed (indirective) form of a verb that expresses past events or facts not known to the speaker through immediate personal experience. According to Bashir, ‘the perfect also appears typically in the opening sentence of traditional (folk) tales about the past’ (Bashir 2006:36), as in Example (n). However, the full semantic scale of this form, and whether it should be considered tense or aspect, remain to be studied and described in more depth. The present discourse analysis already gives some hints about the possible interpretation of this verb form. The subject-marking pronominal clitics may be attached to the perfect stem or to another clause constituent, always prior to the stem. In the glossed texts, the perfect is trans-lated as present perfect, past perfect, simple past or past continuous in English, depending on its function in the translated sentence.

Examples l–n (l) yaw tat ɣa xyar vitk his father very old become.PF ‘His father has become very old.’ (m) yǝm a z ы kǝnd tuǝtk this EMP my wife be.PF ‘Apparently, it was my wife.’ (n) tuǝtk nǝ-tuǝtk ... yǝt kǝmpir azı

be.PF NEG-be.PF DEM2 old woman so kǝmbaɣal tuǝtk-it ki […]

poor be.PF-sfx that ‘Once upon a time [lit. ‘it was, it was not’] …this old woman

was so poor that […]’

The pluperfect (PPF) or distant past is used for events that happened before another past event or for events that happened in the distant past. As with past tense and perfect, the pronominal clitics may be attached either to the pluper-fect stem or to another clause constituent, always prior to the stem.

Examples o–p (o) z ы vrыt pard wǝstu my brother last year came.PPF ‘My brother came [lit. had come] last year.’

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(p) yǝz yi ȷǝwon yas z ыnǝn mǝrtu yesterday one young horse mine die.PPF wuz az ruyi xы yas ɣa xafa=ǝm vit-ǝy

I because of own horse very upset=1SG become.PST-i ‘Yesterday a young horse of mine died [lit. had died], I got very upset because of my horse.’

2.3. Oral narrative genres Not much has been written yet about Wakhi narrative genres. According to Mock, who did research on oral expressive forms among Wakhis in northern Pakistan, ‘the most common narrative genre is zindak (Mock 1998:44) which he translates as ‘story’. Mock remarks that Wakhis make a clear distinction between truth and fiction, ‘between zindak told as fiction and zindak told as true’ (Mock 1998:201).

As understood by the Wakhi people in the Tajik Wakhan, the genre called zinda only refers to a kind of folktale. They have a specific form and are in-troduced by an equivalent of ‘once upon a time’, in Wakhi: tuǝtk – nǝtuǝtk or tu – nǝtu (translated as ‘it was – it was not’). Often they are ‘animal tales’. Some zindas were published in Pakhalina (1975) and Gryunberg & Steblin-Kamensky (1976).

Another fictional genre is what Wakhis call riwoyat. This genre includes legends and traditional stories. Legends tell the story of a place or of a histor-ical personage, or they can have a religious character. Traditional stories are stories where supernatural personages interact in various ways with humans; often they are stories with a moral, or just stories about a human meeting with a supernatural being and the consequences of this kind of meeting.

The most typical supernatural personages in these traditional stories are: prǝy – a female supernatural being. Prǝys are beautiful; often they are heard

but not seen. Men can fall in love with them. They are dangerous, and can kill people when the people do something that the prǝys do not like. They live in remote places in the mountains, herding and milking the mountain goats or sheep (ȷondor). In Wakhi, the term ȷondor refers specifically to an ibex (moun-tain goat) or a Marco Polo sheep. There are many stories about people who are said to have met a prǝy and who have consequently become prǝynog (a person who has entered in contact with fairies). These are people who behave differently from other people; usually they talk to themselves, hear voices, or do other unusual things.

vaɣd – a female supernatural being with long breasts. She has a scary appear-ance, produces strange sounds and scares people. She can do harm to people.

saxs – a stranger, an old man with supernatural power. Often he appears suddenly, and he looks like a man and speaks the human language. He is wise

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and his actions always lead to a moral lesson. He teaches moral values and educates people by blessing them or punishing them.

This is definitely not the full list of supernatural beings. Listed here are only the beings that appear in the narratives collected in the Tajik Wakhan. To obtain a more complete list of supernatural beings with a detailed description of their characteristics, more research would be necessary.13 It is also not easy to get full information about these supernatural beings because they are a type of ‘taboo’. Reluctance to give details about certain phenomena is also a feature of a high-context culture.14 Even the stories where these beings appear and act as major participants provide as little information about them as possible, which makes such stories almost incomprehensible for foreign listeners unless they receive more detailed complementary information.

Apart from these fictional genres, there is a second group of genres, genres more or less based on truth and real life. We have anecdotes, short narratives that serve an entertainment. Most anecdotes relate a funny episode taken from real life. An ancestor’s history usually refers to an ancestor and his/her accomplishments. A historical account is based on a real event that happened in history.

The third group of genres comprises narratives that relate to recent events. An autobiographic story gives details about some important events in the nar-rator’s life. Usually it covers a longer period of time, giving details about time and place and a chronological succession of events. An eyewitness account tells an episode that was witnessed by the narrator. Sometimes the exact de-tails about time or place are not necessary, but it is clear that this episode hap-pened in a real time and a real place and was witnessed by the narrator.

13 Mock (1998:68–78) provides a fuller description of the supernatural beings appearing in Wakhi stories collected in northern Pakistan. 14 In the field of intercultural communication founded by the anthropologist Edward Hall in the 1970s, the terms high-context culture vs. low-context culture refer to the style of communica-tion. Low-context cultures prefer a direct style of communication, one that is more explicit, relying on verbal expressions and relatively more explanations. High-context cultures prefer an indirect style of communication, using implicit and non-verbal elements and relying on the ‘unwritten’ and unexpressed rules and knowledge of the culture.

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3. Methodology

3.1. Presentation of the data This study is based on data collected during three visits to the villages in the Wakhan valley in Tajikistan between June 2010 and August 2011, and on re-search and language analysis work undertaken between 2010 and 2013 in Du-shanbe. Therefore, in this study, the term Wakhi refers to the Wakhi language as it is spoken in Tajikistan.

The data corpus consists of 46 recorded, transcribed and grammatically analysed oral narratives collected in various villages in the Wakhan valley in Tajikistan. The narrators were adult men and women of various ages, levels of education and professions. From this corpus of 46 narratives, 29 were sub-jected to more detailed discourse analysis. Of these, 21 are presented in this study in the form of full interlinear text (see Table 1. List of Narratives). In addition, I had at my disposal ten narratives published by Gryunberg & Ste-blin-Kamensky (1976) and seven narratives published by Pakhalina (1975), who collected their stories between 1955 and 1968.

Although the choice of the types of narratives recorded during my visits to the Wakhi villages was more or less random and depended mostly on what the people we visited wanted to talk about or tell us, we collected quite a balanced sample of different types of narratives. To get the most authentic narratives, we did not ask people to tell us a specific story on a specific topic. We wanted to collect the narratives that are the most common and most natural. Here, I must give credit to my friend, Ms Raihon Sohibnazarbekova who accompa-nied me during my language data collection trips. She was the bridge between me, a foreigner, and the Wakhi people. When we recorded the stories, it was she who initiated the conversation and to whom the stories were primarily told. I was recording them on a voice recorder. In this way, we could avoid distortion of the narrative form, for example through giving too many expla-nations or using simplified vocabulary, which would have happened if the story was told to me as a foreigner. Thus, the stories were told to a Wakhi person, to someone who speaks the same language, has the same cultural back-ground and understands the context without needing extra explanation. We realized this advantage only later during analysis of the recorded narratives. Stories that made little sense to me, as a foreigner, although translated and analysed, made perfect sense to Ms Raihon. I was obviously missing some background information that every Wakhi person naturally has. In this sense,

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the collected narratives are performed in their natural form, as told to a person with the same language and cultural background.

The only genre that we were not able to get, and thus is not present in this study, is folktales. Surprisingly, we did not meet anybody who could tell us a folktale. Is it a genre in the process of disappearing? Or is it a more elaborate genre with a specific form? In the latter case we can assume that it would be harder to obtain such story as a spontaneous response because, unless the nar-rator is a skilled storyteller, (s)he would need more time to prepare the story in advance. In any case, even when we tried to ask people specifically to tell us a folktale, we were not able to get any. Maybe we were just not lucky enough to find a skilled storyteller.15 The material collected and published by Pakhalina (1975) and Gryunberg & Steblin-Kamensky (1976) contains several folktales however, and although I did not analyse these narratives, at least they provide a point of reference. It would certainly be worth looking for the causes why the folktale seems to be a disappearing genre today.

It is also worth mentioning that while most of the recordings were made spontaneously, without any preliminary preparation by the narrators, our col-lection contains six narratives that the narrator prepared in advance. These (and several more) stories later went through an editing process and were pub-lished in a book Xikwor naqlis zavǝr ‘Wakhi stories for children’ (Shaidoev 2012). However, for the purpose of this study, we use the unedited versions, in the form they were told to us and recorded.

Although Labov & Waletzky in their framework focused primarily on oral narratives of personal experience, and not on any other narrative genres, Labov himself claims that:

The L&W framework developed for oral narratives of personal experience proved to be useful in approaching a wide variety of narrative situations and types, including oral memoirs, traditional folktales, avant garde novels, thera-peutic interviews and most importantly, the banal narratives of every-day life. (Labov 1997:396)

3.2. Methodology – Labov’s model Labov & Waletzky (1967) presented a model of narrative analysis that was later revised and developed by Labov (1972, 1997, 2001, 2004 and 2006). Their goal was to define the most fundamental narrative structures of stories. They suggest that ‘such fundamental structures are to be found in oral versions

15 Although at the time of writing this study we were not able to find any folktales, during our later visit in Wakhan we collected a good number of folktales which were later edited and published in a book of Wakhi folktales Xikwor zindais (Obrtelova et al. 2016). This new col-lection does not contradict the findings in the present study, and will be included in the next publication about Wakhi narrative genres.

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of personal experiences’ (Labov & Waletzky 1967:12). Their material is not collected from skilled storytellers, nor does it consist of often re-told tradi-tional genres such as folktales, legends or myths. They collected the narratives of ordinary people telling an original oral version of personal experience. Moreover, in order to reduce the speaker’s consciousness of being recorded, which could lead to a more formal form of speech, Labov & Waletzky asked the speakers to tell about an emotionally significant event in their lives (‘Have you ever been in danger of dying?’), which was a way to a get a spontaneous response and the most natural form of speech.

Labov & Waletzky defined narrative as ‘one method of recapitulating past experience by matching a verbal sequence of clauses to the sequence of events which actually occurred’ (1967:20). Not every recapitulating past experience is a narrative. Narrative is defined by temporal sequence. According to Labov & Waletzky (1967:21) ‘only independent clauses are relevant to temporal se-quence’ and ‘any subordinate clause is removed from the temporal sequence of narrative, even if it retains its own temporal reference’.

Examples given by Labov & Waletzky and describing the same situation show the difference between what is considered narrative and what is not.

Example of what is considered narrative: the sequence of clauses corresponds to the sequence of events as they occurred.

(Labov & Waletzky 1967:20) [5] a. Well, this person had a little too much to drink b. and he attacked me c. and the friend came in d. and she stopped it.

Example of what is not considered narrative: ‘this form of presenting depends upon syntactic embedding’ (Labov & Waletzky 1967:20) and does not corre-spond to the temporal sequence of the events as they occurred.

(Labov & Waletzky 1967:20) [5’] c. A friend of mine came in d. just in time to stop a. this person who had a little too much to drink b. from attacking me.

Another example of what is not considered narrative: Although this example is expressed by independent clauses and not by subordination, the verbal order

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of clauses is the reverse of the sequence of events it describes, and therefore cannot be considered as narrative.

(Labov & Waletzky 1967:20) [5’’] d. A friend of mine stopped the attack. c. She had just come in. b. This person was attacking me. a. He had had a little too much to drink.

Temporal sequence is a sequence of independent clauses that match the suc-cessive order of events or situation, and it is represented by narrative (or bound) clauses. The position of a narrative clause in a sequence cannot change without modifying the interpretation of the events. A narrative clause that is simultaneous with another narrative clause in a sequence is a coordinate clause (Labov & Waletzky 1967:23). In other words, narrative and coordinate clauses represent the foreground of the story.

On the other hand, there are clauses whose position in the sequence do not modify the interpretation of the sequence of events. ‘A free clause is a clause which refers to a condition that holds true during the entire narrative’ (Labov 1997:401) and may move freely within the frame of the narrative without changing the order of the events presented by narrative clauses in temporal sequence. There are also clauses whose position in the sequence may be al-tered within a certain range, but they are not valid throughout the entire nar-rative. They function as free clauses for only part of the narrative. This type of clause will be called a restricted clause (Labov & Waletzky 1967:23, Labov 1997:401). Free and restricted clauses are not included in the events in tem-poral sequence. In other words, they represent the background of the story.

Narratives ‘must contain at least one temporal juncture’. (Labov 1997:399). Temporal juncture is what separates two clauses in such a way that the ‘rever-sal of their order results in a change in the listener’s interpretation of the order of the events described’ (Labov 1997:399). ‘This juncture has no relation to any free or restricted clauses which may fall in between the temporally ordered clauses’ (Labov & Waletzky 1967:26). The verb carrying the tense and aspect marker of the narrative clause will be called the narrative head (Labov & Waletzky 1967:27).

Labov (1997:401) gives an example (below) of different types of clauses with the temporal junctions between b and c (because a and b overlap), c and e (because d is a free clause), e and f, f and g, g and h, h and i, and j and k. Because i and j overlap, there is no junction between them.

a. restricted Oh I w’s settin’ at a table drinkin’ b. restricted And – this Norwegian sailor come over c. bound an’ kep’ givin’ me a bunch o’ junk about I was sittin’ with his woman.

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d. free An’everybody sittin’ at the table with me were my shipmates. e. bound So I jus’ turn aroun’ f. bound an’ shoved ‘im, g. bound an’ told ‘im, I said, ‘Go away.’ h. bound [and I said] ‘I don’t even wanna fool with ya.’ i. An’ nex’ thing I know restricted I’m layin’ on the floor, blood all over me, j. restricted An’ a guy told me, says, ‘Don’t move your head.’ k. bound [And he said,] Your throat’s cut.”

While the basic narrative unit in Labov’s model is the independent clause, these clauses form part of higher units. According to Labov (1972:363), a well-formed narrative usually contains the following sections:

Abstract Orientation Complicating action Evaluation Resolution Coda

Not all narratives must contain all these six sections. At a minimum, a narra-tive consists of complicating action and resolution, which are a temporally ordered sequence of narrative clauses and where resolution is the terminating moment in this sequence. The abstract is a short summary of the story. Not all narratives have it. Orientation consists of free clauses that provide infor-mation about participants, place, time or situation. Sometimes, however, this information can be included in the first narrative clauses. The coda also con-sists of free clauses at the end of the narrative, and has the role of a bridge between the end of narrative and the present. Evaluation is ‘perhaps the most important element in addition to the basic narrative clause’ (Labov 1972:366). It presents the narrator’s point of view, indicates the point of the narrative and why it is told, and presents the narrator’s judgement of the events.

While Labov & Waletzky (1967:35) treated evaluation as a separate sec-tion, Labov later acknowledged that, although it is usually concentrated at the end of the narrative in the evaluation section, it ‘may be found in various forms throughout the narrative’ (1972:369). He recognizes external, embedded and internal evaluation. External evaluation is explicit, and ‘the narrator can stop the narrative, turn to the listener, and tell him what the point is’ (Labov 1972:371). Sometimes the narrator embeds the evaluation in the narrative, ei-ther by quoting his own thoughts or by reporting someone else’s comments without having to step out of the story. The third type of evaluation is internal evaluation. ‘Labov regards internal evaluation that is deeply embedded into

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the complicating action as highly complex’ (De Fina & Georgakopoulou 2012:29).

In the revision of his model of narrative analysis made in 1997, Labov ex-plores further aspects of narrative such as reportability, credibility, causality, the assignment of praise and blame, and objectivity.

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4. Temporal sequence

The analysis of temporal sequence will show the typical characteristics of nar-rative clauses in Wakhi narratives. One issue that arose during the analysis was the need to identify the tense-aspect form of the narrative head in Wakhi oral stories. Another task was to describe other tense-aspect forms used in the oral narratives and to define their function.

4.1. Narrative head In Section 3.2 the narrative head was defined as ‘the verb carrying the tense and aspect marker of the narrative clause’ (Labov & Waletzky 1967:27). The sequence of narrative heads (verbs) organized in a chronological order thus represents the succession of events moving the action of the story forward. The analysis of the sample of Wakhi oral narratives showed that with respect to the narrative head there are two types of narratives: narratives with heads in the non-past tense, and narratives with heads in the past tense (PST). It was interesting to note that, perhaps unexpectedly, in the majority of collected sto-ries the narrative heads were in the non-past. Of 46 narratives, the narrative heads of 29 are in non-past, while only in 16 are they in past tense. One nar-rative – ‘Tirbar’ [TB] – seems to combine the non-past, past tense and perfect. We will return to this issue later.

We can assume that the tense-aspect form of the narrative head used in a narrative is not a purely random choice of the narrator, but rather seems to follow certain rules. The analysis shows that in all eyewitness accounts the narrative heads are in past tense. This is the case in autobiographic stories and in eyewitness accounts. Moreover, stories reporting the eyewitness account of someone else as embedded direct speech are told in past tense. That is, the stories whose focus is to report recent past events exactly as they occurred in reality, and which should not be doubted because the narrator saw what hap-pened with his/her own eyes and heard it with his/her own ears, have narrative heads in past tense. On the other hand, in all anecdotes, legends and traditional stories, the narrative heads are in non-past tense. That is, the stories that report events that are not necessarily and exactly based on true and experienced facts (although many of them are based partly on historical facts) and whose pur-pose, rather than to report events as they happened, is to entertain or educate, use non-past tense. For example, although anecdotes are often based on a real

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recently witnessed event, and report the event quite faithfully, their purpose is to entertain, and therefore they are told in non-past tense. This is also the case for an ancestor’s history, where the history is not so recent and the facts are difficult to verify, or for tales with a moral, the main purpose of which are to educate or teach some principle.

Example 116. Narrative in past tense [WV:1–6]

In this story, all narrative heads (marked in bold) are in past tense. Clauses 2a and 2b are free clauses. 2a is in past tense; 2b is in past tense imperfective. Clauses 4a and 5b are subordinate clauses. For the full story see Text Corpus in Appendix [WV].

1 ircraxı wuz=ǝt z ы rcopc dǝ bu xur-ǝn tǝr ȷǝngal at sunrise I=and my cousin with two donkey-ABL to forest ɣuz-ǝrk rǝɣd=ǝn firewood-DAT go.PST=1PL ‘At sunrise, I and my cousin with two donkeys went to the forest for firewood.’ 2a awo baf=ǝt bi mur tu weather good=and without cloud be.PST 2b amo cǝ wuc nag kam-kamǝk nыwыk=ǝs di but from up side a little wind=IPFV hit.PST ‘The weather was good and clear but wind was blowing from the upper end a little bit.’ 3a dǝ ȷǝngal ɣat=ǝn=ǝt in forest arrive.PST=1PL=and 3b xы xur-v=ǝn vast=ǝn own donkey-PL.OBL=1PL tie.PST=1PL ‘We arrived at the forest and tied our donkeys.’ 4a ɣal iw-i band ɣuz nǝ-dyǝtu=ǝn ki yet one-ACC binding firewood NEG-hit.PPF=1PL that 4b xur-v-ǝn ar=ǝt bыf sar vit-i donkey-PL.OBL-ABL roar=and roar beginning become.PST-i ‘We hadn’t yet made one bundle of firewood when the donkeys’ bellowing and roaring started.’

16 All examples from here on are taken from the data corpus of Wakhi oral narratives, and are numbered as whole units.

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5a Niv gǝsogǝs rǝɣd=ǝn ki now running go.PST=1PL that 5b xur-vi s apt-is qbal=ǝv kǝrk donkey-PL.OBL wolf-PL surrounded=3PL do.PF ‘Now, we ran [lit. running we went] (and saw) that the wolves had surrounded the donkeys.’ 6a Sak bǝ waɣd=ǝn=ǝt we too shout.PST=1PL=and 6b dǝ ɣar-ǝn=ǝt s ung-ǝn dǝ xы tpar-v-ǝn with stone-ABL=and wood-ABL with own axe-PL.OBL-ABL s apt-vi ay kǝrt=ǝn wolf-PL.OBL chasing do.PST=1PL ‘We, too, shouted and, with the stones and sticks, with our axes, we chased the wolves away.’

Example 2. Narrative in non-past [WA:1–12]

In this story all narrative heads (marked in bold) are in non-past.17 Clause 1 is a free clause in perfect,18 clauses 3b, 4b and 5b are direct speech, and clauses 8,12a, 12b are free evaluative clauses. For the full story see Text Corpus in Appendix [WA].

1 yǝm mǝmlǝkat tuǝtk bыnǝtkin DEM1 region be.PF deserted ‘This region has been deserted [because there was no water].’ 2a i saxs wizi-t a drǝt yan aȷon one person come-3SG EMP there2 then dear.adr yǝm bыnǝtkin DEM1 deserted ‘One person [‘saxs’ – a stranger with supernatural power] comes there, then, my dear, this (was) deserted... [inaudible]’ 3a e xan-d adr say-3SG 3b tu kis t nǝ-car-o you.SG sowing NEG-do-Q ‘He says: “Don’t you sow (the field)?”’

17 As stated in Section 2.2., in the free translation I translate the non-past tense with the present tense in English. 18 As stated in Section 2.2., in the free translation I translate the perfect with the present perfect, past perfect, simple past or past continuous, depending on its function in the sentence and on the context.

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4a xan-d say-3SG 4b xǝy yupk nast crǝng gox-ǝm well water is not how make-1SG ‘(The man) says: “Well, there is no water, how do I do (it)?”’ 5a xan-d say-3SG 5b yupk wos-t water become-3SG ‘(The stranger) says: “there will be water”.’ 6 yan aȷon xы bilca-i yaw-ǝr rand then dear own small shovel-ACC he-DAT give.3SG ‘Then, my dear, he gives him his little shovel.’ 7 yǝm bilca-i yund a dra DEM1 small shovel-ACC take.3SG EMP there3 ‘(The man) takes this little shovel there.’ 8 me a yǝm me niv=ǝs xan-d ki spo pup behold EMP DEM1 behold now=IPFV say-3SG that our grandfather ‘This one, now he is saying that our grandfather… [inaudible]’ 9a yǝt yan dǝy-t DEM2 then hit-3SG 9b rost yaw nǝ-xas -t right it NEG-pull-3SG ‘That (one) then hits (the ground), he doesn’t pull it out (right away) [as he was supposed to do].’ 10a yan tapыv-d then swing-3SG ‘Then [instead] he swings (it).’

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11a yan ki tapыv-d then that swing-3SG 11b yǝm bilca a r-a wǝrǝs -t=ǝt DEM1 small shovel EMP in-DEM3 remain-3SG=and 11c yǝm yupk sk-a wizi-t DEM1 water through-DEM3 come-3SG 11d a sk-a dǝsta wizi-t EMP through-DEM3 handle come-3SG ‘Then as he swings it, the little shovel stays inside and the water comes out, it comes out through the handle.’ 12a niv a sk-a bilca xat=ǝs now EMP through-DEM3 small shovel self=IPFV cǝ wǝzd-i REL come.PST-i 12b mыmkin buy a yǝt cǝsma dod yupk maybe two EMP DEM2 spring amount water ‘Now, if (the water) had been coming through the little shovel itself [not only through the handle], maybe there would have been twice as much water in this spring.’

The question I had to address was whether there would be a difference in the understanding and interpretation of a story if we exchanged the tenses-aspect form of narrative heads. To find the answer I did an experiment. I took some stories and exchanged the past tense verbs in the narrative heads for non-past, and non-past verbs in the narrative head for past tense, and presented the adapted stories to a Wakhi listener. Such stories did, however, not make any sense to a Wakhi listener. In an attempt to overcome this problem, I asked a Wakhi speaker to try to re-tell the stories in the other tense-aspect form to see if the interpretation of the story would change. Again, the reaction showed that it was not possible. However, when trying to understand why it would not be possible, some answers began to emerge.

The argument against trying to convert the story with past tense narrative heads into non-past was that with non-past narrative heads it would no longer be an eyewitness account, and the story would shift into a fictional sphere or into the future (i.e. something that did not happen). Since an eyewitness ac-count gives many temporal and spatial details and other references supporting the credibility of the story and indicating that the narrator was a direct partic-ipant in the events, shifting it to the fictional sphere or to what had ‘not hap-pened’, would not make sense. Telling the same story in non-past would re-quire changing the overall structure of the story, that is, changing much more than just the tense-aspect form of the narrative head.

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The same happened when we tried to convert a story with non-past narra-tive heads into past tense. The fictional nature of the story was so obvious that using the past tense in narrative heads, and thus forcing it to sound like an eyewitness account, sounded unnatural. However, there did appear to be one possibility. While using the past tense was not accepted, using the perfect was acceptable. Although we have not found evidence in the Wakhi spoken in Ta-jikistan of any narrative that would be told exclusively using the perfect in narrative heads, and the most often used narrative tense-aspect form is still the non-past, we did find occurrences of non-past together with perfect. In such occurrences, the perfect does not express anteriority; it simply follows the pre-ceding clause in temporal sequence (Example 3 below). We can infer that alt-hough this combination of non-past and perfect is not common, it is possible. Given the semantic properties of non-past tense and perfect, we cannot assume they are identical, and further research will be necessary to analyse and de-scribe in more detail the relation between non-past and perfect in this type of narratives, as well to make a deeper study of the functions of each tense-aspect form of Wakhi verbs.

Example 3. [TO:3–5] (narrative heads are marked in bold) 3a aȷon yaw yan psi-t wizi-t xun-ǝr dear he then return-3SG come-3SG house-DAT 3b didiɣ-d ki see-3SG that 3c Sǝltonbaxt=ǝs xǝc xmir car-t Sultonbakht=IPFV bread dough make-3SG ‘My dear, he then returns to the house, sees that Sultonbakht is making dough for bread.’ 4a xan-d say-3SG 4b e Sǝltonbaxt i δay-ǝk d-ǝt crir-ǝk s xǝn adr Sultonbakht one man-DIM in-DEM2 wild rose-DIM near musfid-ǝk xan-d=ǝs ki old man-DIM say-3SG=IPFV that 4c wuz=ǝm mǝrz. I=1SG hungry ‘He says: “Sultonbakht, there is a man near the wild rose, an old man, he is saying that he is hungry”.’

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5a xnǝtk say.PF 5b xay tǝy i cut-ǝk xǝc drǝm tǝy well is one half-DIM bread here1 is ‘ (Sultobakht) has said: “Well, there is half (a loaf) of bread here”.’

If we now look at the story Tirbar [TB] mentioned earlier, which looks as if it confuses the three narrative tenses-aspect forms – past tense, non-past, and perfect – we can now see that in fact there is not as much confusion as there seemed to be at first sight. The story sounds natural for a Wakhi listener, and therefore we cannot simply assume that the tense-aspect forms are confused. If we admit that the non-past and perfect are interchangeable and that using either of them would not significantly change the semantics of the story, we are left with only one question: Why are there still occurrences of the past tense alongside the non-past/perfect in the narrative heads of this story? The overall structure of the story is more complex than that of the other stories. In fact, it would be possible to separate the long story into three smaller parts, although they would still be interconnected, and such a division does not seem to be very clear and natural. After all, the story was originally told as a whole. This superficial division can however show us that during the process of nar-ration, the perspective of the narrator changes. The entire complex story os-cillates between what the narrator had heard from somebody but did not wit-ness herself on the one hand (non-past and perfect), and what she personally witnessed on the other hand (past tense). It is true that this story is not easy to follow, and we still must take into consideration that the telling of the story was a spontaneous act, and the narrator did not have time to prepare or pre-think the story, yet there is no wrong use of narrative tense-aspect forms.

Example 4. [TB:11–13; 16–20a] 11a yan yawis bǝ rǝc -ǝn r-a then they more go-3PL in-DEM3 11b cǝrm-ǝn ki enter-3PL that 11c dra aʒi ki awo r-a kam r-a dǝst there3 such that air in-DEM3 little in-DEM3 inside ‘Then, they go more there, they enter (and they notice) that there is like that, there is very little oxygen inside there.’

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12a waxti ki rǝxk=ǝv when go.PF=3PL 12b za-ist=ǝv crǝng=ǝv a r-a dǝst guy-PL=3PL enter.PF=3PL EMP in-DEM3 inside 12c ciz=ǝv r-a gыtǝtk yǝm xun-ist thing=3PL in-DEM3 find.PF DEM1 house-PL yǝm rang xun-is DEM1 manner house-PL 12d yǝm rang rǝc-ǝn tr-ǝm tr-a palыw nag DEM1 manner go-3PL to-DEM1 to-DEM3 side side 12e sǝk mobǝyn roraw=ǝt tr-ǝm tr-a nag mala-ist=ǝv on middle path=and to-DEM1 to-DEM3 side house-PL=3PL ‘When the guys have entered inside (and when) they have found things there, they have found houses, houses like this, they go in different directions, in the middle (there is) a path and on the sides (there are) houses.’ 13a crǝng=ǝv enter.PF=3PL 13b i kilometr=ǝv rǝxk ki one kilometre=3PL go.PF that 13c dra aʒi xalgis dǝ xы dǝwra a r-a dǝst there3 such people in own era EMP in-DEM3 inside kǝrk zindagı do.PF life ‘They have entered and have gone one kilometre when (they saw) that in that time such people had lived there.’ [...] 16 yan woz gыyo d-ǝm nazdiki mǝktab-i XX then again it is said in-DEM1 recently school-EZ XX za-ist=ǝv rǝxk ta child-PL=3PL go.PF here3 ‘Then again (I heard that) recently the children from the school XX have gone there.’ 17 ʒi dǝ xы malim-ǝn=ǝv rǝxk ekskursiya such with own teacher-ABL=3PL go.PF educational excursion ‘They have gone there for an educational excursion with their teacher.’

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18a sayoat=ǝv rǝxk ki travel=3PL go.PF that 18b gыtǝtk=ǝv ta spundr-vi find.PF=3PL there3 carriage shaft-PL.OBL 18c a spundr-ist=ǝv niv dǝ mǝktab EMP carriage shaft-PL=3PL now in school ‘They have travelled there and found the carriage shafts there, the carriage shafts (are) now in the school.’ 19a ya rwor yawis yaw mar rǝtk ki DEM3 day they it to me give.PF that 19b tu yaw dǝ xat-ǝn yund you it with self-ABL take ‘That day they have given it to me (saying): “take it with you [...]”’ 20a wuz=ǝm yan xat I=1SG then say.PST ‘Then I said […]’

In the examples above we can see that in the first part of the narrative, the first complicating action is told in non-past (clauses 11a, 11b, 12d). Clause 12 is more complicated, with its subordinate clause, but the narrative head still re-mains in non-past. However, from clause 13 on, the narrative continues in perfect. In clause 16 a new complicating action starts; here the narrative heads are all in perfect. In clause 19, the narrator becomes personally involved, and already by clause 20, which reports the narrator’s reply in 1st person, the nar-rative head changes to the witnessed form of the past, which is past tense.

In regards to evidentiality, Wakhi manifests a dual system where the sim-ple past tense is the witnessed verb form expressing direct experi-ence/knowledge, and the perfect (apart from the resultative-stative function) represents the non-witnessed verb form used for indirect knowledge (equiva-lent to English ‘apparently’). The correlation between evidentiality and tense-aspect also exists on the discourse level. The source of the narrator’s infor-mation/knowledge is marked by the tense-aspect verb form in the narrative head. Thus, eye-witnessed information in a story is reflected in the use of past tense in the narrative head, and non-eye-witnessed information (also referred to as indirective or mediative information) is identified by the use of non-past tense/perfect in the narrative head.

4.1.1. Texts collected by Russian scholars Here, I cannot avoid mentioning a problematic observation that may cast doubt on my inference above.

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In addition to the narratives that I collected, there is a small collection of folktales published by Gryunberg & Steblin-Kamensky (1976) and Pakhalina (1975). Of the 10 narratives published by Gryunberg & Steblin-Kamensky, five were collected in Tajik Wakhan and five in Afghan Wakhan. Four of the five stories from Tajik Wakhan are told in past tense and one in non-past. All the stories from Afghan Wakhan are in past tense and all the stories are folktales or animal tales; i.e. none of them can be considered to report an eye-witness event. Similarly, out of seven stories published by Pakhalina (1975), one was collected in Afghan Wakhan, three in China, and three in Tajik Wakhan. Of the three stories collected in Tajik Wakhan, two are in non-past and one in past tense. Again, all of them are folktales; none of them report eye-witnessed events.

Unfortunately, we do not know now how Gryunberg & Steblin-Kamensky and Pakhalina collected their narratives. Their stories seem to be more elabo-rate. We can assume that the narration might have been prepared in advance and that there is influence of other languages (Tajik, Dari, Russian). Interest-ingly, it seems to be the case that the stories narrated in non-past are produced by the youngest narrators (aged 30, 16 and 16). Another interesting observa-tion is that all stories collected outside of Tajik Wakhan (i.e. in Afghanistan and China) are in past tense. Also, the tales and legends collected by Mock (1998) among the Wakhis in Pakistan show a preference for past tense over non-past.

Is using non-past in the narrative head characteristic for Tajik Wakhan more than for Wakhi speakers from Afghanistan, China or Pakistan? Or is it a sociolinguistic feature distinguishing between a spontaneous, non-polished narrative and a formally well-constructed narrative? Unfortunately, at this point we do not have enough data to give an answer to the first question. As for the second question, there are indications that do not support this state-ment. We have at our disposal a collection of 31 short stories published in 2012 (Shaidoev 2012) using a newly established Wakhi alphabet (see Section 2.1.). These stories were carefully edited, yet all of them still follow the same pattern of using the non-past or past tense in narrative heads; that is, eyewit-ness stories (or reported eyewitness accounts) are in past tense and traditional stories are in non-past.

It may just as well be that the folktales (the genre collected by Gryunberg & Steblin-Kamensky and Pakhalina) are not an original Wakhi genre and they were adopted from the written traditions of other languages (Tajik, Russian), and therefore the use of the tense-aspect patterns may reflect the written tra-ditions of these languages rather than typical use of tense-aspect forms in Wakhi. This claim can be supported by the observation that even in our later collection of data, which includes folktales, the occasional use of past tense in non-eyewitness narratives is observed only in folktales, rarely in legends and traditional stories, which are of genuinely local origin and have not been adopted from the written traditions of other languages.

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4.2. The discourse functions of verb forms As we have already noted in Section 4.1., the narrative heads, that is, verbs in narrative or narrative-coordinate clauses in Wakhi oral stories, can be either in past or in non-past tense, occasionally in perfect. Tense-aspect forms used in free or restricted clauses, i.e. clauses not included in the temporal sequence (see Section 3.2.), in embedded direct speech or in subordinate clauses are non-past, past tense (PST), perfect (PF), pluperfect (PPF), imperfective or it-erative aspects (IPFV) of past and non-past tense.

4.2.1. Stories told in non-past With stories told in non-past, the non-past in narrative clauses has the role of a non-witnessed (indirective) form (see Example 2). Rarely, a non-past imper-fective is used in a narrative clause, in which case it serves to highlight the action and give it a sense of immediacy. In the traditional story ending with a moral [HS], Hazrati Shoh Nosir, who is a respectable religious personage, ap-pears in a village where the people do not recognize him. When he takes on the appearance of a poor man, the people treat him with disrespect. When he appears at the same place in a rich garment, the people show him respect. The non-past imperfective occurs at the moment when Hazrati Shoh Nosir comes to a wedding as a poor man. Although the narrative heads in the whole story are in non-past, three narrative clauses that tell how people mistreat him use the non-past imperfective, highlighting the contrast between how this respect-able person should be treated (which the listener knows already) and how he is treated in reality.

Example 5. [HS:11] 8. ‘There has been a wedding, then he enters.’ 9. ‘After he enters the house, my dear, then they seat him over there [in the

not respectable place].’ 10. ‘They seat him there, well, he (is like) a poor person [that’s why they

treat him badly].’

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11a iw=ǝs caqǝk-i dыrz-d one =IPFV small container for ash-ACC take-3SG 11b dǝy-t r-am sar hit-3SG to-DEM3 head 11c iw=ǝs sǝpk kar-t sk-a sar one=IPFV twig put-3SG on-DEM3 head 11d aȷon qloɣ=ǝs wыdr-ǝn tr-ǝm nag=ǝt dear mockery=IPFV catch-3PL to-DEM1 side=and tr-ǝt nag=ǝt to-DEM2 side=and 11e alo yan yaw sk-a bar nыwыz-d adr then he through-DEM3 door come out-3SG 11f ɣǝyb wos-t disappeared become-3SG ‘Someone is taking a small container for ash, hits him on the head, someone

else is putting a twig on his head, my dear, they are pushing him with mockery this way and that way, dear brother, so he goes out and disappears.’

Sometimes the perfect is used in a temporal sequence as a variant of the non-past (as we have seen in Example 3), sometimes to express an already accom-plished action or anteriority to an action in non-past (as in Example 6 below).

Example 6. [VG:6–7] [A woman finds a ‘vaghd’ that has just given birth to a child in the cattle-

shed. She goes to the house to prepare food for the ‘vaghd’. But when she returns back to the cattle shed, the ‘vaghd’ has already gone.]

6a elo=ǝt xay badi i soat bu soat wizi-t ki adr=and well after one hour two hour come-3SG that 6b ici nast nothing is not ‘My dear, well, after one or two hours she comes (back and sees) that there is nothing there.’ 7a ya xы zman-i bǝ dǝz g taxk=ǝt DEM3 own child-ACC too take.PF leave.PF=and 7b me yǝm dod c-a xы luq-ǝn bыnǝtk behold DEM1 size from-DEM3 own rag-ABL throw.PF a r-a kbun EMP to-DEM3 wooden bowl ‘(The vaghd) has taken her child and has left, look, she has left the piece of her cloth in the wooden bowl.’

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In free or restricted clauses, the non-past is most often used in comments by the narrator relating to the present or to general truths. It can also be used to express habitual or iterative actions as a background to the narrative clauses, in the same way as the non-past imperfective adds the imperfective or iterative aspect. However, most typically, the background to narrative clauses in non-past is expressed by using perfect. The past tense is used in narrator’s com-ments relating to the past. Here, the witnessed form of the past is used.

In embedded direct speech, the non-past, non-past imperfective, past tense (witnessed form) and perfect (non-witnessed form), past tense imperfective and the imperative are used in their primary functions, as described in Section 2.2.

In subordinate clauses, non-past and non-past imperfective indicate simul-taneity with the main clause, while anteriority is expressed by perfect or plu-perfect.

4.2.2. Stories told in past tense When it comes to stories told in past tense, in narrative clauses the past tense is a witnessed form of the past and is used to tell the past actions as eye-wit-nessed events, as we have seen in Example 1. In this function it does not al-ternate with any other tense-aspect verb forms.

In free or restricted clauses, the background to the narrative clauses is most often expressed by past tense or past tense imperfective, as in clauses [WV:2a and 2b] in Example 1. The perfect and the pluperfect are used to express an-teriority to the actions in the narrative clauses. The non-past or non-past im-perfective are used in the narrator’s comments relating to the present or to general truths.

In embedded direct speech, the non-past, non-past imperfective, past tense (witnessed) and perfect (non-witnessed), past tense imperfective, pluperfect and the imperative forms are used in their primary functions.

In subordinate clauses, simultaneity with the main clause is expressed with the past tense or past tense imperfective to add imperfective aspect, as well as with the non-past. The non-past is also used to express simultaneity that ex-tends to the present. The perfect is used to express anteriority that is still valid at the time of the main clause; the pluperfect is used to express anteriority.

4.3. Narrative clauses If we isolate the narrative clauses and merge the coordinate clauses into single units, we get a string of narrative units divided by temporal junctures. Seman-tically, the temporal juncture is the equivalent of ‘then’. In a narrative se-quence, we essentially find an ‘a-then-b’ relationship between narrative

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clauses. Another type is the ‘a-and at the same time-b’ relationship, or occa-sionally ‘a-and now that I think back on it-b’ relationship between narrative clauses (Labov & Waletzky 1967:30).

Although the organization of oral narratives is typically simple and linear, only rarely do we find a narrative that would be a simple and uninterrupted sequence of unmarked narrative clauses. ‘Narratives are usually told in answer to some stimulus from outside, and to establish some point of personal inter-est’ (Labov & Waletzky 1967:34). There are different functions of narrative as we will see in the following chapters, and they all have an effect on the narrative structure. Therefore, it is useful to identify the unmarked temporal ordering and syntactic structure of the narrative clause. We will see that ‘de-partures from the basic narrative syntax have a marked evaluative force. The perspective of the narrator is frequently expressed by relatively minor syntac-tic elements in the narrative clause’ (Labov 1972:378).

As observed in the narratives collected for the purpose of this study, we can describe the surface structure of a narrative clause in the following way. Alt-hough the Wakhi language shows more flexibility of word order than we find in Persian or Tajik, the unmarked word order is subject-object-verb (SOV). The typical constituent ordering in a narrative clause would be:

- [embedded subordinate]

1. Temporal: most typically the development marker19 (DM) yan (then, af-terwards)

2. Adverbial (temporal, locative, manner) – However, adverbials seem to be the most flexible component of a clause; they can appear in any position, depending on the constituent they modify. If they are a temporal or spatial point of departure20 (PoD), they are placed before the subject.

3. Subject – Since the subject is also marked, either by a personal ending attached to the verb or by an enclitic typically attached to the first constit-uent of the clause, the subject in the form of a noun or a pronoun after a noun has often already been introduced earlier, and does not appear.

4. Complement – direct object

5. Complement – indirect object

19 The development marker is a particle used to ‘constrain the reader to move on to the next point’ and indicates ‘that the material so marked represents a new development in the story or argument’ (Dooley & Levinsohn 2001:93; Levinsohn 2011:95). 20 Point of departure ‘establishes a setting for what follows. (…) In narrative, points of departure relate events to their context on the basis of time, place or reference’ (Levinsohn 2011:39–40).

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6. Verb

7. Adverbial (locative prepositional phrase)

8. Conjunction: most typically coordinate enclitics =ǝt (‘and’), xǝ (enclitic designating consecutive actions) and subordinate ki (‘that’ – with a wide range of subordinate functions).21

- [embedded subordinate]

Some of the narratives have almost only unmarked forms, i.e. are entirely composed of syntactically unmarked narrative clauses (see Example 1). How-ever, most of the stories are a combination of narrative, free and restricted clauses, in both marked and unmarked syntactic form.

Example 7. Constituent order in a Wakhi narrative [FM:12–13] (1) (...... 4 ......) (.... 6 ....) 12 yan yav vdǝk-i wыdыr-t then their road-ACC hold-3SG ‘Then he blocks their road.’ (1) (.................................. 4 ..............................) (.. 6 ..) 13a Yan ya xы zman-vi cbыr nfar-i rimi-t then DEM3 own child-PL.OBL four person-ACC order-3SG ( …..... 7 ...........) (8) t-a palыw =ǝt to-DEM3 side =and (................. 3....................) (…......... 7 ............) 13b xat d-a truy-ǝn c-ǝm palыw self with-DEM3 three-ABL from-DEM1 side ‘Then he orders his four sons to go to the other side and he, himself, with three others, stays on this side.’

21 One could ask why we don’t place these conjunctions at the beginning of the clause. Two of them are enclitics; especially the enclitic =ǝt seems to form an inseparable unit with the word to which it is connected. It is impossible to separate the enclitic from the word with which it is connected by placing it in the next clause. As for the subordinate conjunction ki (that), the audio recordings prove that in speech the pause that separates two clauses comes after ki, and so it naturally forms a unit with the preceding clause, rather than with the following one.

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5. Overall narrative structure

As already mentioned in Section 3.2., a ‘fully-formed narrative’, according to Labov (1972:363), usually consists of six sections: abstract, orientation, com-plicating action, evaluation, resolution and coda. However, not all narratives necessarily contain all of these sections. At minimum, a narrative has a com-plicating action and a resolution. Moreover, as Labov (1972:369) states in his revision of the overall structure of narratives, the evaluation does not neces-sarily need to take the form of a separate section. We may find the evaluation in different forms presented directly in the complicating action and resolution. Because of the complexity of the question and the importance of evaluation, we will examine the evaluative devices in a separate chapter.

5.1. Abstract ‘It is not uncommon for narrators to begin with one or two clauses summariz-ing the whole story’ (Labov 1972:363). The abstract answers the question: What the story is about? Our data collection consists mostly of narratives ac-quired in an interactive setting, some narratives being embedded in longer conversational sections. Therefore, only some narratives are introduced by an abstract that would be a consistent part of the story. Usually, if it occurs it gives information about the type/genre of the story (as in Example 8) or sum-marizes the story that follows (as in Example 9).

Example 8. [SK:1] 1a xa wuz ɣali i riwoyat sav-ǝr xan-ǝm well I yet one legend you.PL.OBL-DAT say-1SG 1b yaw ciz-i tarixi-o it thing-EZ historical-CONF ‘Well, I will tell you yet another story, it’s a historical story.’

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Example 9. [HS:3] 3a yan a ya zmon-e ki Imit Hazrati Piri S onosir drǝt then EMP DEM3 time-IND that Imit Hazrati Shoh Nosir there2 wǝzg=ǝt come.PF=and 3b nosinos kǝrk=ǝv unknown do.PF=3PL 3c sil cǝ wǝzg flood REL come.PF 3d me a ya zmon me a yǝm s ыy behold EMP DEM3 time behold EMP DEM1 rock niv r-ǝm prыt ziɣn ǝt cǝy yǝm δan now in-DEM1 front side open REL DEM1 wasteland ‘Then, in that time when the Pir Shoh Nosir [Nasir Khusraw] has come to Imit but nobody has recognized him, when the flood has come, it (was) in that time that this rock (has appeared) from the front side of the village, on the wasteland.’

Some narratives incorporate an equivalent of the abstract into the conversation preceding the actual narrative, sometimes given by another speaker when ask-ing the narrator to tell such and such a story or about such and such an event which is apparently already known to some of the listeners. However, these ‘abstracts’ that precede the actual narratives and are part of conversation are not part of our transcribed data corpus.

Of the 29 analysed narratives, eight have an abstract as a part of the narra-tive, and in at least five other narratives the equivalent of an ‘abstract’ is em-bedded in the conversation that precedes the actual narrative. However, we cannot easily draw conclusions from these numbers because even our audio recordings do not always contain whole conversations. Sometimes the actual recording only began after a topic of the narrative had already been presented in the casual conversation preceding the recording.

5.2. Orientation Orientation gives information about the time, place, persons, and situation of the narrative (Labov 1972:364). Typically, though not always, this infor-mation, or at least as much as is necessary to understand the narrative is given in free clauses in a separate section preceding the complicating action. How-ever, the orienting clauses are not necessarily placed at the beginning of the narrative. As Labov states, ‘in practice, we find much of this material placed at strategic points later on’ (Labov 1972:364).

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Of 29 narratives analysed, five do not have an orientation section preceding the complicating action, and the orienting information is found in the first nar-rative clauses of the complicating action. 24 other narratives have a separate orientation section of variable length; however, it usually only contains nec-essary initial information, while the rest of the orienting information (intro-ducing new participants, time and space setting, or situation) is presented in the complicating action, either as orienting free clauses between narrative clauses or in the narrative clauses. The length of the orientation section, and consequently the amount of information given in orienting clauses, seems to depend on the function and purpose of the narrative.

The eyewitness accounts are interesting in the sense that some of them have a very long orienting section (as in Example 10) while some others give ori-enting information in a very concise way, either briefly in orienting free clauses or directly in narrative clauses (as in Example 11).

Example 10. [SE:1–7] ORIENTATION 1a N markaz-i ilmы farhang tuǝtk N center-EZ knowledge and culture be.PF 1b yǝt-i ickuy inkor nǝ-car-t DEM2-ACC nobody denial NEG-do-3SG 1c baroi ki ya spo pup mыlo Q maktab-dor tuǝtk because DEM3 our grandfather mullah Q school-having be.PF ‘N. was a center of culture and education, nobody denies it because our grandfather [ancestor] Mullah Q. had a school there.’ 2 maktab-dor tuǝtk ar bu soli-ǝr am yǝm palыw school-having be.PF all two shore-DAT also DEM1 side am ya palыw also DEM3 side ‘He had a school for both sides of the river, this side and that side, too.’ 3 sol-i cilыm bu sыnduq kitob yaw-ǝn tu year-EZ fortieth two coffer book his-ABL be.PST ‘In 1940 he had two coffers (full) of books.’ 4 yan sol-i cilыm a yǝm kitob niga cǝrak then year-EZ fortieth EMP DEM1 book keeping do.INF ɣa qing tu very difficult be.PST ‘Then in 1940 it was very difficult to keep this book [=these books].’

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5 band=ǝs kǝrt=ǝv xalg-i arrest=IPFV do.PST=3PL man-ACC ‘They used to arrest people [for having books].’ 6 ba sol-i cilыm spoc-ǝn a drǝt i calǝk tu to year-EZ fortieth ours-ABL EMP there2 one small stove be.PST rыxnig=ǝs goxt=ǝv fire=IPFV make.PST=3PL ‘Until 1940 we had a little stove there (where) they used to make fire.’ COMPLICATING ACTION with orienting information 7 bad i nfar=ǝv wozomd-i after one person=3PL bring.PST-i ‘Then they brought one person […]’

Example 11. [WC:1] COMPLICATING ACTION with orienting information 1 sak tыtvart tobiston dǝ i mosin-ǝn tǝ wuc nag rǝɣd=ǝn we year before last summer with one car-ABL to up side go.PST=1PL ‘The year before last, in summer, we went to (the villages) on the upper side.’ 2 dǝ Zmыdg jыngalsar spo mosin-ǝn ciz ki cǝy in Zmudg forest-beginning our car-ABL something slot vit-i broken become.PST- i ‘Near the forest in Zmudg something broke in our car.’

In Example 10, ‘Story from the Early Soviet Era’ [SE], the whole narrative is made up of 15 sentences, the first six of which are the orientation section. In Example 11, ‘Wolf and calf’[WC], there is no orientation section; the narrative consists of 11 narrative sentences and the orienting information is found in the first narrative clauses of the complicating action, where we find identification of ‘who’, ‘when’, ‘where’, and ‘what’. We can see that the dynamics of these two stories are different.

The ‘Story from the Early Soviet Era’ [SE] contains much more back-ground information. It seems important for the narrator to specify the exact place, time, participants and circumstances. The narrative part of the story then tells about how the narrator and his relatives were preserving and hiding the books. All information in the orientation section is relevant. It happened in N., a village that was known as a cultural and educational centre in the region. The relatives of the narrator were educated people; his grandfather had a reli-gious school. This tells us that it was not only simply saving and hiding some

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books, it tells us about the importance of the books for these people. Another piece of information specifies the time, the year 1940, which was a difficult period in Soviet history, when people were persecuted for having religious books. This adds a dimension of danger and tension to the story. Hiding such books was very dangerous activity at that time. We can say that the choice of the orienting information has a specific function in the story. The action itself would have been banal as a story if the narrator did not present this orienting information. The point of the story is not the hiding of the books itself, but the fact that the books being hidden were so important, and that the narrator and his relatives risked persecution for hiding them.

By contrast, the story ‘Wolf and calf’ [WC] introduces a story that is com-posed uniquely of narrative clauses. The orienting information is reduced to a minimum, and even the information that is provided is not very specific (Ex-ample 11). The ‘we’ introduces the narrator and someone else; we don’t know who and how many other people. Later in the story, this information is com-pleted by ‘we – three or four people’ [WC:6] which is not very specific either. We know it happened in the summer of the year before, in the village of Zmudg, near the forest. Unlike the previously mentioned narrative (in Exam-ple 10), this one does not need more orienting information. The focus is more on the action itself, rather than on when or where it happened. It could have happened some other year or in some other place without changing the under-standing of the story.

The orientation section in legends usually gives more spatial information, especially if the legend is about a place. In this case the orientation often not only presents the place historically but also describes it in its contemporary setting. The legend Chiltan (‘Forty Sons’) is about a place called Chiltan. The long orientation section gives many spatial details in the first 14 orienting sen-tences, as we can see in the following example.

Example 12. From Chiltan (not in the present text corpus) 1a Ciltan bǝ dǝ Zung=ǝt Chiltan too in Zong=and 1b aft kilomitr cǝ Zung-ǝn bland-ǝr Δirc nung qs loq eight kilometre from Zong-ABL high-COMP Zirch name village ‘Chiltan is also in Zong, and seven kilometres above Zong there is a village named Zirtch.’ 2 wudg ruz bǝ a yǝt deha tǝt tǝy today day too EMP DEM2 village there2 is ‘Even today that village exists there.’ 3 mǝrdыm ta zindagı car-t people there3 living do-3SG ‘People live there.’

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[…] 5 tuǝtk i mǝrdina δay be.PF one man man ‘There was a man.’ 6 yaw d-ǝt Δirc kǝrk zindagı dǝ xы kǝnd-ǝn he in-DEM2 Zirch do.PF living with own wife-ABL ‘He lived in that Zirch with his wife.’ 7a yan ɣa zindagı kǝrk=ǝt then very living do.PF=and 7b xǝy yos tuǝtk=ǝt well young be.PF=and 7c kǝnd-i yutk=ǝt wife-ACC take.PF=and 7d a d-ǝt Δirc kǝrk zindagı EMP in-DEM2 Zirch do.PF living 7e a dra dǝ Z uy yaw-ǝn tuǝtk xun EMP there3 in Zhuy his-ABL be.PF house ‘Then he lived long, well, he was young and he got married and he was living in that Zirch, he had a house there in (the place called) Zhuy.’ 8 Zuy bǝ a d-a Δirc Zhuy too EMP in-DEM3 Zirch ‘Zhuy is also in that Zirch.’ 9 Δirc cǝy yaw-ǝn bǝ woz azor=ǝt i kыca Zirch REL its-ABL too again thousand=and one street ‘What (was) Zirch, there (were) thousand and one streets.’ 10a yaw bǝ lup Δirc xan-ǝn it too big Zirch say-3PL 10b ʒi xalg tasawыr car-t ki yaw pisǝk nǝy ki such people imagination make-3SG that it small but 10c sk-a cusk cǝ san-i yan xan on-DEM3 top REL go up-2SG then say 10d yǝm palыw nung ciz ya palыw ciz DEM1 side name what DEM3 side what ‘It (was) also a big (place), about Zirtch they say, people imagine that it’s a very small place, but when you go up, then (you) say, “what is it called on this side, what is on that side”.’

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11a yaw bǝ tǝy Z uy=ǝt cǝqlay Δirc=ǝt lup Δirc=ǝt aȷon it too is Zhuy=and small Zirch=and big Zirch=and dear Wыd=ǝt yǝm rang ȷay-is yaw-ǝn Wyd=and DEM1 manner place-PL its-ABL Pastxun=ǝt ǝm rang ciz-is yaw-ǝn Pastkhun=and DEM1 manner thing-PL its-ABL ‘There is also Zhuy and little Zirch and big Zirch and, my dear, there is Wyd and it has such places, such as Pastkhun and it has such things.’ 12 yan a d-a Δirc yǝt dǝ xы kǝnd-ǝn kǝrk zindagı then EMP in-DEM3 Zirch DEM2 with own wife-ABL do.PF living ‘Then, in that (village) Zirtch, he lived with his wife.’ 13a xǝy yos=ǝv tuǝtk well young=3PL be.PF 13b tum yav-ǝr nǝ-sdyǝtk=ǝt so they.OBL-DAT NEG-seem.PF=and 13c lup woc-ǝn=ǝt big become-3PL=and 13d yav-ǝn ǝcǝk farzand nǝ-vitk they.OBL-ABL none child NEG-become.PF ‘Well, they were young, they didn’t realize so [time has gone by so quickly] and they become old and they did not have any children.’ 14a yan qin woc-ǝn then sad become-3PL 14b yǝm zman yav-ǝn ki nǝ-vitk DEM child they.OBL-ABL that NEG-become.PF 14c yan qin woc-ǝn then sad become-3PL ‘Then they become sad, because they haven’t got any children, they become sad.’

Traditional stories usually do not have a long orientation section or any at all. They give the information that is relevant for understanding the point of the story. Since the point of most of the traditional stories is telling about super-natural experiences, meeting a supernatural being (good or bad) and the con-sequences, as well as giving a moral lesson, it is usually not important where and when the story happens, and the narrative often does not contain this in-formation, or it is expressed only vaguely (Example 13).

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Example 13. [WA:1–2] ORIENTATION 1 yǝm mǝmlǝkat tuǝtk bыnǝtkin DEM region be.PF deserted ‘This region has been deserted [because there was no water].’ COMPLICATING ACTION 2 i saxs wizi-t a drǝt one person(supernatural) come-3SG EMP there2 ‘One person [‘šaxsʾ – a stranger with supernatural power] comes there […]’

However, some traditional stories may have the characteristics of legends. As already mentioned, the Wakhi uses one word riwoyat for what we translate as ‘traditional story’ or ‘legend’. The distinction I make in this study is that leg-end refers to a real place or historical personage. In legend, the traditional supernatural elements are used to support the explanation or origin of a place, phenomenon or tradition, while a traditional story is built around a moral or a supernatural experience where place, time or historical personage do not play a big role. Some of the traditional stories collected give more spatial details that make them look more like legends, but they are centred on traditional supernatural elements (meeting with a supernatural being). The narratives ‘Shermalik’ [SM] and ‘Boboantar’ [BO] are two variants of the same plot about a person who was in contact with fairies and who was killed by them when he disobeyed them. ‘Shermalik’ [SM] gives the exact location and iden-tifies the person by name, even giving the name of his grandfather, which makes it sound more like a legend or an ancestor’s history. On the other hand, ‘Boboantar’ [BO] tells the story about a prǝynog, a man who had contact with fairies, not giving any identification details about the participants or place, thus making it sound more like a traditional story.

Example 14. [SM:1–3] 1 Kixn ȷrav-ǝn ayloq S abxun Bǝrzǝc Mrǝk Kixn canyon-ABL summer settlement Shabkhun Berzhetch Mrek ‘In the Kikhn canyon there are summer pasture settlements of Shabkhun, Berzhech and Mrek.’ 2 yan=ǝv t-ǝt rǝxk ayloq then=3PL to-DEM2 go.PF summer pasture ‘Then they used to go there for the summer pasture.’

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3 yan yǝm kuy alo S irmlik nung Xoldorbig yav pup then DEM1 who adr Shermalik name Kholdorbeg their grandfather ‘Then (there was) someone, my dear, his name was Shermalik, he was grandfather of Kholdorbig (and his family).’

Example 15. [BO:3] ORIENTATION 3a prǝynog tuǝtk man in contact with fairies be.PF ‘He was a man (who was) in contact with fairies.’ COMPLICATING ACTION 3b yar xan-ǝn ki. to him say-3PL that ‘They [the fairies] tell him […]’

Anecdotes have a short orientation section. Giving too many spatial and tem-poral details would disturb the dynamics of this genre (Example 16).

Example 16. [AD:2] 2 a sol-o-i ciz cǝ tu yan a yǝm Kixn za-is EMP year-PL-EZ what REL be.PST then EMP DEM1 Kikhn guy-PL yan aʒi qobil za yawis-o then such capable guy they-CONF ‘In those years then these guys from Kikhn, they were such capable guys.’

Historical accounts and ancestor’s histories, as with legends, usually start with a longer orientation section identifying the place, time, participants and circumstances of the narrative (Example 17).

Example 17. [MB:1–14] 1 z ы pup Mirbuɣa nung my grandfather Mirbugha name ‘My grandfather's [ancestor’s] name (was) Mirbugha.’ 2 yǝt tuǝtk a d-ǝm Rostqla mir DEM2 be.PF EMP in-DEM1 Roshtqala ruler ‘He was a ruler in this Roshtqala.’ 3 xǝdi cǝ Rus on=ǝt Sǝɣnon=ǝt Ɣǝnd=ǝt Rostqla=ǝt self from Rushan=and Shughnan=and Ghund=and Roshtqala=and ‘He himself (was a ruler) of Rushan and Shughnan and Ghund and Roshtqala and ...’

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[…] 6 Mirbuɣa s ǝɣn me a d-ǝm Rostqla tuǝtk Mirbugha Shughni behold EMP in-DEM1 Roshtqala be.PF ‘Mirbugha was Shughni, he was in this Roshtqala.’ 7 yaw-ǝn tuǝtk ыb pǝtr his-ABL be.PF seven son ‘He had seven sons.’ 8 yan mir yaw zolim xa mir zolim then ruler he tyrant well ruler tyrant ‘Then he was a tyrannical ruler, well, a tyrannical ruler.’ 9 aȷon kar-t nalog sǝ xoȷagı zaw ruɣn aȷon dear put-3SG tax (ru) to household grain butter dear to sasmoa wǝsk nalog ar xoȷagı until six month old calf tax (ru) to household ‘My dear, he imposes a tax on homesteads: grains, butter, my dear, calves under six months, (it was) the tax on homesteads.’ 10 to sasmoa wǝsk-ǝn yaw gus t=ǝs itk ani until six month old calf-ABL his meat=IPFV eat.PF it is said ‘It is said that he used to eat (only) meat of calves younger than six months.’ 11 can tr-a nag nast-o from there3 to-DEM3 side is not-CONF ‘What is older than six months, he doesn’t (eat).’ 12 yan ruɣn kar-t then butter put-3SG ‘Then he introduces (tax) on butter.’ 13 yaw naql aʒi his story such ‘Such is his story.’

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14 xan-ǝn ki i xыynan yaw-ǝn nǝ tuɣ tuǝtk say-3PL that one woman her-ABL nor goat be.PF nǝ may tuǝtk nǝ ɣыw tuǝtk nor sheep be.PF nor cow be.PF ‘They say that there was a woman who didn’t have any goats, any sheep or any cows.’

At this point it becomes clear that the purpose of telling the story is important for the choice of the information presented. We can observe that the orienta-tion section, orienting clauses or orienting elements in narrative clauses give information that is relevant for understanding the point of the narrative. We will examine this aspect more in Section 7.2., which will show that ‘the selec-tion of the orientation is a crucial act of interpretation of the stream of events’ (Labov 1997:409).

5.2.1. Verbs in orientation The orientation section is made up of free clauses. Although the narrative clauses follow relatively strict rules regarding the use of verb tense-aspect forms, we do not observe the same strictness in orientation. However, certain properties are typical of this part of the narrative.

In the stories with narrative clauses in past tense, the verbs in orienting clauses are most often in past tense when they are non-activity verbs (Example 18, clause 3) and Example 19, clauses 2–3), and in past tense imperfective when they are activity verbs (Example 18, clause 5), or in perfect for giving the orientation anterior to the described events (Example 18, clause 2), and non-past for information that is valid until the present (Example 19, clause 7).

Example 18. [SE:2–3;5] 2 maktabdor tuǝtk school-having be.PF ‘(our grandfather) had a school […].’ 3 sol-i cilыm bu sыnduq kitob yaw-ǝn tu year-EZ fortieth two coffer book his-ABL be.PST ‘In 1940 he had two coffers (full) of books.’ […] 5 band=ǝs kǝrt=ǝv xalg-i arrest=IPFV do.PST=3PL man-ACC ‘They used to arrest people [for having books].’

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Example 19. From ‘Badakhshani night’ (not in the present text corpus) 2 soli azorы nыsadы […] tu year thousand and nine hundred and […] be.PST ‘It was in 19…’ 3 wuz=ǝm yakыm kurs tu I=1SG first year be.PST ‘I was in the first year [at university].’ [...] 7 a d-ǝt institut niv zabon-i xitoı ȷoy-ǝn EMP in-DEM2 Institute now language-EZ Chinese study-3PL ‘Now, in this Institute people study the Chinese language […]’

In the stories with narrative clauses in non-past (or in perfect), the orientation is most often presented in perfect, especially giving information about place and participants (Example 20), and in non-past when the information is valid in/until the present (Example 21).

Example 20. [WA:1] 1. Yǝm mǝmlǝkat tuǝtk bыnǝtkin DEM1 region be.PF thrown ‘This region has been deserted [because there was no water].’

Example 21. [MB:13a] 13. xan-ǝn ki say-3PL that ‘They say that [...]’

5.3. Complicating Action and Resolution Complicating action, one of the main parts of the narrative, is made up of narrative clauses in temporal ordering and is terminated by the resolution. It answers the question: What happened then? Chapter 4 gives characteristics of the narrative clauses and identifies two main narrative forms: narratives in past tense and narratives in non-past/perfect tense, where the criterion for choosing the verb tense-aspect form is whether or not the story is an eyewitness account. This distinction is consistently observed in all 29 narratives collected in the Tajik Wakhan that were analysed for the purpose of this study. Moreover, even in the 17 unanalysed narratives, from the whole corpus of 46 collected

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narratives, we see the same principle being observed in the choice of the nar-rative tense-aspect form.

5.3.1. Marking the transition between Orientation, Complicating Action and Resolution In Section 5.2.1., we have identified the verb properties of the orientation sec-tion, and in Chapter 4 the use of verb tense-aspect forms in narrative clauses. We will now look at how orientation typically joins complicating action and what syntactic elements are used for this purpose. This will first be shown in the case of an eyewitness narrative, i.e. a narrative in past tense (Example 22), then in a legend and a historical narrative (Examples 23 and 24), both in non-past.

Example 22. [GF:1–2;7–9] ORIENTATION 1a a d-ǝt sol-o-vi ki sak=ǝn=ǝs dǝ S zindagı EMP in-DEM2 year-PL-PL.OBL that we=1PL=IPFV in S life cǝ kǝrt-i REL do.PST-i ‘In those years when we were living in S’ 1b wuz=ǝm sinf-o-i nы yo ast=ǝm tu I=1SG class-PL-EZ nine or eight=1SG be.PST ‘I studied in the eighth or ninth grade’ 1c baf tǝr z ы yod nast good in my memory be.3SG ‘I don’t remember well.’ 2 spoc-ǝn i amsoya tu ours-ABL one neighbour be.PST 'We had one neighbour’ [...] 7a ya prcod aʒi tǝr dgar prcod-vi monand nǝ-tu DEM3 girl such in other girl-PL.OBL resemling NEG-be.PST ‘That girl was not like other girls’ 7b bdili xat=ǝs s tik kǝrt-i with self=IPFV playing do.PST-i ‘she used to play alone a lot’

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7c doim=ǝs toqa toqa nǝyn-i always=IPFV alone alone sit.PST-i ‘all the time she used to sit alone.’ 8 nǝy ki baf aʒi as yor bidor prcod tu. but good such intelligent vigilant girl be.PST ‘But she was such an intelligent and prudent girl.’ COMPLICATING ACTION 9 yan i rwor a yǝt prcod nas t-i dǝ spo kыca then one day EMP DEM2 girl get lost.PST-i in our street ‘Then, one day, that girl disappeared from our street.’

As mentioned earlier, in the narratives in past tense, the orientation verbs in Example 22 are in past tense for non-activity verbs, as in [GF:1b, 2, 7a], or in past tense imperfective for activity verbs, as in [GF:1a, 7b-c]. Moreover, we find here clauses in non-past that are evaluations by the narrator [GF:1c]. All other clauses in the orientation [GF:1-8] are in the past tense and give the background that the narrator considers necessary for understanding the story. The complicating action opens in [GF:9] with the verb in past tense. Change of tense/aspect is usually not the only indicator that marks the transition from the orientation section to the complicating action. In the first narrative clause, even before we hear the verb, the first element that can be noticed is often a development marker (DM) yan (‘then’), which typically appears throughout the text to signal a new development. It may be followed by a temporal point of departure (PoD) and is often accompanied by the emphatic particle a (EMP) with the demonstrative (DEM) that serves as a referential PoD of renewal, reintroducing a participant who has already been introduced in detail in the orientation. Sometimes, instead of this referential PoD, we find a noun phrase (NP) with a referential indefiniteness marker (IND) that introduces a new par-ticipant. In clause [GF:9] we find all four indicators that mark the joining of orientation with complicating action: the development marker (yan – ‘then’), the temporal point of departure (i rwor – ‘one day’), the referential point of departure of renewal (a yǝt prcod – ‘that girl’), and the tense/aspect form (PST). Many narratives in past tense (eyewitness) follow the same pattern with some if not all of these indicators, but the minimal indicator is the use of tense/aspect form. The orientation section is not usually rich in development markers and points of departure. However, the development marker yan ap-pears in the orientation section in some oral narratives, so it is not a forbidden element, although it appears rarely in other parts of the narrative than the com-plicating action

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In fictional genres, such as legends, told in non-past, the orientation is usually in the perfect. The complicating action is indicated minimally by the change of tense/aspect form, that is, a change from perfect into non-past. Here too, the first narrative clause is often introduced by the development marker yan (‘then’), sometimes accompanied by the point of departure. Throughout the complicating action, the development markers signal new developments. The resolution also tends to be introduced by a development marker.

Example 23. [HS:7–9] ORIENTATION 7 tuǝtk dra tuy be.PF there3 wedding. ‘There has been a wedding there.’ 8a tuy tuǝtk wedding be.PF ‘There has been a wedding.’ COMPLICATING ACTION 8b yaw yan cǝrǝm-d. he then enter-3SG ‘Then he enters.’ 9a yan ki cǝrǝm-d, aȷon a d-ǝt xun=ǝt then that enter-3SG dear EMP in-DEM2 house=and 9b yan yaw-i o dra nidv-ǝn then he-ACC behold there3 seat-3PL ‘After he enters the house, my dear, then they seat him over there [on the not respectable place].’

As in fictional genres, in the historical accounts the transition from the orien-tation to the complicating action is signalled by the development marker yan (‘then’) and by the change of tense/aspect form from perfect to non-past. In the ‘Story about the kidnapped girl’ [SK], we find throughout the narrative the development marker signalling new developments, but in this narrative the resolution is not introduced with the development marker. It is signalled by the change of constituent order. In Example 24, clause 54a shows inversion within the verb phrase (xlos cart ‘do-free’ would be the unmarked order). In 54b, the number above the constituent indicates what its default position would be and thus shows the departure from the unmarked constituent order.

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Example 24. [SK:8–9;54a] ORIENTATION 8a […] dǝ Yǝmcыn tuǝtk-it in Yamchun be.PF-sfx 8b i prcod ɣa xыsruy tuǝtk-it one girl very beautiful be.PF-sfx ‘[...] it has been in Yamchun, there has been a very beautiful girl.’ COMPLICATING ACTION 9a yan awgon-is c-a palыw-ǝn wǝzy-ǝn xǝ then Afghan-PL from-DEM3 side-ABL come-3PL and 9b wǝzy-ǝn dыrz-ǝn yaw-i come-3PL take-3PL she-ACC 9c rǝc -ǝn go-3PL ‘Then the Afghans come from the other side, they come, take her and go.’ [...] RESOLUTION 54a car-t xlos bǝroi nomыs-i misol qsloq do-3SG free for reputation-EZ for example village ‘He frees (her) for the honour of the village’ (…………….2…………....) (…4...) (………1…….) (...3...) 54b a c-a awɣon-ǝn car-t ya prcod-i xlos EMP from-DEM3 Afghan-ABL do-3SG DEM3 girl-ACC free ‘from those Afghans, that girl he frees […].’

At this point, it is important to remember that in addition to the narratives recorded in a spontaneous and natural setting and told without any preparation, six narratives were told to us with prior preparation and with the intention to have them published. We can see certain differences between these six narra-tives and the rest of the oral data. Although the narrator strictly maintains the distinction between an eyewitness account (or reported eyewitness account in 1st person) that is told in past tense and a narrative told in non-past, these nar-ratives contain very little evaluative material, they have either a very short or no orientation section, and no development marker yan (‘then’) or any form of address is present at all. However, in the two narratives that have orienta-tion, the verb tense-aspect change is in accord with what we observed in other narratives. When introducing the first narrative clause of the complicating ac-tion, the verb form changes from perfect to non-past, or from perfect to past

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tense, and the clause is introduced in both cases by a temporal point of depar-ture. This seems to be enough indication for the listener to know that the se-quence of narrative clauses is starting. Throughout the stories, the temporal points of departure are used instead of development marker ‘then’.

Example 25. [DR:1–2] ORIENTATION 1a naql car-ǝn ki telling do-3PL that 1b a d-ǝm Stxarv a d-a ȷay ki EMP in-DEM1 Shitkharv EMP in-DEM3 place that mis slax δan=ǝt niv lup ȷǝngal cǝy before naked wasteland=and now big forest REL 1c dǝ qdim waxt sisadǝ sastǝ sas bna tuǝtk in ancient time three hundred and sixty six household be.PF ‘They say that in Shitkharv, in that place that (was) formerly a wasteland and where now a big forest (is), in the past there were three hundred and sixty-six households.’ COMPLICATING ACTION 2a i rwor i saxs pǝydo wos-t=ǝt one day one person apparent become-3SG=and 2b a tum d-ǝm xalg-vi bar cǝ rǝs -t EMP much in-DEM1 man-PL.OBL door REL go-3SG 2c ickuy yaw-i tǝ xы xun nǝ-lǝcǝr-t nobody he-ACC in own house NEG-let-3SG ‘One day a person [‘saxs’ – a stranger with supernatural power] appears

and as much as he goes to the people’s doors nobody lets him into their house.’

Although we do not know exactly whether these differences are due to the personal style of the author (since all six of these narratives were told by one person) or are due to not yet defined but probably felt rules about how a writ-ten narrative should look, we may assume that certain discourse markers widely used in the oral narratives will not be used in written narratives. That seems to be the case for all forms of address, the extensive use of the devel-opment marker yan (‘then’) and the particle xay (‘well’). Also, the structure of the story will be more linear with less evaluative elements, or at least with evaluation that is more organized and structured. The perception of what a written narrative should look like will very likely be influenced by the features of a written form of the Tajik language, which is the official language of the country and is used for written expression among the Wakhi people.

In addition to what has been said until now, we may also find narratives where the transition point between the orientation and complicating action

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sections is less clear. The change of tense/aspect sometimes does not corre-spond with other indicators, especially the development marker yan (‘then’) or other points of departure. In Example 26 below, the point of departure i waxt (‘once, one time’) in 3a indicates the change from the orientation to the complication, while the verb remains in perfect and changes into non-past only in the following clause (3b) introduced by the development marker yan (‘then’), after which the narrative clauses in the complicating action continue in the non-past. The beginning of the complicating action in this story may just as well be the clause 3b, while 3a would still be part of background (ori-entation) information to give context to what follows, which would explain the use of perfect.

Example 26. From the ‘Legend about Silk Fortress’ (not in the present text corpus) 3a i waxt ziddiyat-i bayni so-on sar vitk=ǝt one time conflict-IND between king-PL beginning become.PF=and 3b yan ujum car-ǝn then attack do-3PL ‘Once a conflict between kings has begun and then they attack....’

5.3.2. Structure and syntactic properties of Complicating Action Apart from a certain verb tense-aspect form typical of narrative clauses, we identified other typical features of the complicating action. When we compare the six oral narratives that were produced with prior preparation and with the intention to publish them, and the other oral narratives that were recorded in a spontaneous setting, we can see the differences in the dynamics of the narra-tive. The six narratives prepared in advance have a linear, almost unmarked structure. The complicating action is a string of narrative clauses separated by temporal junctures. Generally, we can observe that it is a simple ‘a-then-b-then-c-etc.’ pattern with almost no evaluative clauses and very few narrative-coordinate clauses.

By contrast, the structure of the complicating action in the spontaneously produced oral narratives is not always a simple series of temporal junctures. The narrative clauses are interlaced with the orientation and evaluative clauses, as well as with direct speech. Generally, we can observe that in the beginning part of the narrative, the free clauses slowing down the action are mostly orientation clauses. The free clauses that appear towards the end are usually evaluations.

We find many clauses or even sections of direct speech in Wakhi narratives, both in the prepared and the spontaneous oral narratives. Wakhi does not nor-mally use reported speech, and this is a common feature of the Tajik language as well. Words uttered by someone else are almost exclusively transmitted in

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the form of direct speech, which explains its frequent use in Wakhi narratives. Direct speech adds dramatic character and authenticity to the narrative, as we will see in Section 7.1. It also slows down the action, because more than mov-ing the action forward its main function is to make the narrative sound authen-tic, to make the listener experience the story rather than just be informed of the sequence of events. Direct speech can also be an evaluative device (see Section 6.2.) that allows the narrator to present an evaluation of the events by reporting the words of someone else, a participant in the story.

Also, the order of the narrative clauses themselves is not always in an ‘a-then-b’ sequence. Often we find ‘a-and at the same time-b’ relationships or even ‘a-then-b-and again-a-then-b-then-c’ relationships. We find many narra-tive-coordinate clauses. Repetition is also frequently used as a slowing down and evaluative device: ‘it intensifies a particular action, and it suspends the action’ (Labov 1972:379), see Section 6.3. It may occur as a simple repetition of the verb within a clause, in the form of tail-head linkage, or as repetition of the whole section. In a tail-head construction, the repeated element is the verb or part of the clause or even the whole clause (sometimes even with the ad-dress form and development marker) marked with falling intonation (indicat-ing the end of the sentence) which re-appears at the beginning of the following sentence in exactly the same or only slightly modified wording. Repetition and tail-head linkage are very common in Wakhi oral narratives. In Example 27, a tail-head linkage, we see that the clauses [HS:7–8a, 8b–9a, 9b–10a] are almost identical, with only a slight change in constituent order. Example 28 further shows the tail-head linkage [AN:2b and 2c] and the repetition of the verb within a clause [AN:3].

Example 27. [HS:7–9] 7 tuǝtk dra tuy be.PF there3 wedding. ‘There has been a wedding there.’ 8a tuy tuǝtk wedding be.PF 8b yaw yan cǝrǝm-d he then enter-3SG ‘There has been a wedding, then he enters.’ 9a yan ki cǝrǝm-d aȷon a d-ǝt xun=ǝt then that enter-3SG dear EMP in-DEM2 house=and 9b yan yaw-i o dra nidv-ǝn then he-ACC behold there3 seat-3PL ‘After he enters the house, my dear, then they seat him over there [in the not respectable place].’

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10a dra yaw nidv-ǝn there3 he seat-3PL 10b xay bǝ ol-i bicoragı well in state-EZ poor ‘They seat him there, well, he (is like) a poor person [that’s why they treat him badly].’

Example 28. [AN:2–3] 2a wuz a d-ǝt korga bar=ǝm wrǝfsǝtk=ǝt I EMP in-DEM2 blacksmithery door=1SG stand.PF=and 2b iwki i δay [...] wǝzd suddenly one man […] come.PST 2c wǝzd-i wыr t-a dam come.PST-i load in-DEM3 back ‘I was standing at the blacksmithery door and suddenly a man came […], he came with a load on his back.’ 3 wǝzd-i wǝzd-i ɣat-i dǝ z ы prыt come.PST-i come.PST-i arrive.PST-i in my front ‘As he came [lit. he came, he came], he arrived in front of me […]’

Repetition of the whole section refers to the same event or situation as a review of past events before the string of narrative clauses is interrupted by a section of free clauses introducing a new development. The ‘Story about the Kid-napped Girl’ [SK] (Example 29 below) tells that bandits frequently visited the Wakhi villages to steal girls and cattle. When they stole yet another Wakhi girl, a strong man decided to go find the abductors and bring the girl back. The narrator in this story repeats the same passage three times [SK:30c, 36b and 39c], so the repeated picture (bandits sitting in the house, eating and smoking opium – implying that they were not aware of the presence of the young man who came to save the girl) is very vivid. Also interesting is the use of deixis in the first situation [SK:30c] which uses the first degree of deictic adverb (here1), while the second time [SK:36b] it is referred to with the second degree (there2) and the third time [SK:39c] with the third degree (there3). The action is slowed down not only by repetitions, but also by several free explanatory clauses. After that the action speeds up and is moves forward telling about how the man surprises the bandits, takes the girl from them and returns home with the girl.

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Example 29. [SK:30, 36, 39] [narrative clause with subordinate] 30a wizi-t ki come-3SG that 30b xa a ya awɣon-iš ki ya prcod-i ɣudı cǝ kǝrk well EMP DEM2 Afghan-PL that DEM3 girl-ACC theft REL do.PF ‘He comes (and sees that), well, those Afghans who kidnapped the girl’ 30c yawis kы tǝm nyǝng=ǝt tryok=ǝs xas -ǝn=ǝt they all here1 sit.PF=and opium=IPFV pull-3PL=and awqot=ǝs yaw-ǝn=ǝt food=IPFV eat-3PL=and ‘they have all sat down here1, they are smoking opium, eating a meal’ 30d a ya prcod t-ǝt ɣanʒ EMP DEM3 girl in-DEM2 pantry t-ǝt spoc-ǝn spicalni (ru) ȷay tu a waxt ki in-DEM2 ours-ABL special place be.PST EMP time that 30e dra faqat oȷiz-is alǝtk there3 only woman-PL stay.PF ‘that girl is in the pantry, at that time we had this special place where only women have been staying.’ 31-35 [section of evaluative clauses – explanatory comments made by the

narrator] [narrative clause with subordinate; 36b repeating 30c] 36a xa didiɣ-d a c-ǝt-ǝn didiɣ-d ki well see-3SG EMP from-DEM2-ABL see-3SG that 'Well, he sees, from there he sees that’ 36b yawis tǝt nyǝng tryok=ǝs xas -ǝn they there2 sit.PF opium=IPFV pull-3PL awqot=ǝs yaw-ǝn=ǝt yǝm=ǝt yaw food=IPFV eat-3PL=and DEM1=and DEM3 ‘they have sat there2, they are smoking opium, eating a meal, this and that.' 37-38 [narrative clauses – flashback returning the situation back to the

point immediately preceding the section repeated for the 3rd time]

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[narrative clause with subordinate; 39c repeating 30c and 36b] 39a san-d sk-ǝm kut didiɣ-d ki go up-3SG from-DEM1 roof see-3SG that 39b ya δay-is ki ɣudı cǝ kǝrk=ǝv ya prcod-i DEM3 man-PL that theft REL do.PF=3PL DEM2 girl-ACC ‘He goes up on the roof, he sees that those men who have stolen the girl’ 39c yawis ta tryok=ǝs xas -ǝn=ǝt awqot=ǝs yaw-ǝn they there3 opium=IPFV pull-3PL=and food=IPFV eat-3PL ‘they are there3 smoking opium and eating a meal.’

In addition to the devices mentioned above we find other syntactic properties with various functions. Throughout the complicating action, whenever DM yan (‘then’) is used it signals new developments in the narrative. In many narratives, various forms of address are directed towards the listener, e.g. aǰon (‘my dear’), aǰonikǝm (‘my dearest), elo / elol (‘brother’). This is very typical at highlighted moments of the narrative. Sometimes it co-occurs with DM yan (‘then’) to draw attention to a new development, and sometimes it appears separately or with another highlighting marker, for instance with the non-past imperfective in a narrative clause where the unmarked form would be just non-past, as shown in Example 5 [SK:11a, c, d], to highlight the action and indicate the tension. Another device that is often used in spontaneous oral narratives is use of xay (translated in English as ‘well’) – an introductory particle that sig-nals logical inference or introduces an explanatory note and slows down the action. Often it introduces free evaluation clauses, as we see in Example 30. The use of the forms of address and other particles will be further discussed in Chapter 6.

Example 30. [HS:10] 10a. dra yaw nidv-ǝn [narrative clause] there3 he seat-3PL ‘They seat him there [on a not respectable place]’ 10b. xay bǝ ol-i bǝcoragı [free clause – evaluation] well in state-EZ poor ‘well, he (is like) a poor person [that’s why they treat him badly].’

5.4. Coda A coda is a set of free clauses at the end of the narrative that serve as a bridge between the narrated story and the present time. The majority of the Wakhi narratives collected end with codas of various lengths. Some are only made

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up of one clause signalling that the story has ended, using deixis (Example 31). Some others make only a brief link between the narrative and a specific place or specific people, as in an ancestor’s history (Example 32).

Example 31. [VG:10] 10a yǝt woz me yǝt rang DEM2 again behold DEM2 manner 10b dis-ǝm-a yaw kumyor tuǝtk know-1SG-Q she who be.PF ‘It (was) this way; I don’t know who this woman was.’

Example 32. [BO:21–22] 21 me tum behold such ‘That’s it.’ 22 Boboantar niv ya stxon ta Boboantar now DEM bone there3 ‘Now Boboantar’s bones are there.’

In some narratives, the coda is a longer section, such as when it gives a moral resulting from the story, or when the narrative is related to a certain place, often in the case of legends (Example 33). In the ‘Legend about Silk fortress’ the coda is introduced with the point of departure niv (‘now’) and the tense changes from non-past in the preceding narrative clauses to perfect in the opening clause of the coda (Example 33:46). In the rest of the coda, the nar-rator gives information about the importance of this place in the contemporary context. The coda closes with deixis (Example 33:56). As for the use of verb tense-aspect forms, the non-past is used for the statements that are valid in/un-til the present (Example 33:49, 50b, 51, 55, 56c), perfect is used for past de-scriptions related to the narrative (Example 33:46, 47, 48), past tense is used for events in the recent past that the narrator probably witnessed or at least is sure happened (Example 33:56a), perfect is further used to signal resultativity or anteriority to an event in past tense (Example 33:52, 56b)

Example 33. From the ‘Legend about Silk fortress’ (not in the present text corpus) 46 niv lal de dыnyo masur cǝ vitk now ruby in world famous REL become.PF bo sarofati a yǝt kas Lalmamad ki Ruxsona pǝtr ki thanks to EMP DEM2 boy Lalmamad that Rukshona son that ‘Now, as the ruby [in Wakhi ‘lal’] has become famous in the world, it is thanks to this boy Lalmamad [it was named after him], who (was) Rukshona’s son’

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47 yaw dǝ Abrǝsim qla sarwarı kǝrk=ǝt she in silk fortress reign do.PF=and ‘she has reigned over Silk fortress and’ 48 aȷonikǝm ki yǝt pǝtr amcun yodgorı yaw-i rǝxk my dear that DEM2 son such memory she-ACC go.PF dǝ wodi-i Ɣoron=ǝt in valley-EZ Ghoron=and ‘my dear, that son has remained such a memory of her in the valley of Ghoron.’ 49 wudg ruz a yǝt Vǝrs ǝmqla cǝy today day EMP DEM2 Silk fortress REL yǝt i ȷoy-i ciz spoc-ǝn DEM2 one place-IND what ours-ABL xǝy sak yaw xы cǝz m rang niga car-ǝn well we it own eye manner watch do-3PL ‘These days the Silk fortress which is our (precious) place, well, we cherish it like our own eyes.’ 50a yǝt amcun tarix cǝ gыzastagon-i wodi-i Waxon-ǝn DEM1 such history from ancestors-EZ valley-EZ Wakhan-ABL sak-ǝr wǝrǝxk=ǝt we-DAT remain.PF=and 50b sak bo nom-i yaw iftixor car-ǝn we with name-EZ it pride do-3PL ‘Such a history has remained for us from the ancestors of the Wakhan valley and we take pride in its name.’ 51 tqi sayo-is wǝzy-ǝn i gala sayo-is wǝzy-ǝn many traveler-PL come-3PL one lot traveler-PL come-3PL ‘Many travellers come, a lot of travellers come.’ […] 55 bo sarofati yǝm spo yodgori-i tarixi yawis tqi wǝzy-ǝn thanks to DEM1 our memory-EZ historical they many come-3PL ‘Thanks to our historical monuments many of them come.’

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56a yǝm tum tu riwoyat-i ki DEM1 such be.PST legend-IND that 56b wuz xat=ǝm cǝ ks ǝng=ǝt I self=1SG REL hear.PF=and 56c cǝ dis-ǝm cǝ tarix-i a yǝt REL know-1SG from history-EZ EMP DEM2 qla-i vǝrs ǝm-ǝn fortress-EZ silk-ABL ‘Such was a legend that I myself have heard and that I understand from the history of that Silk fortress.’

A general observation is that, in the narratives told in non-past, the change of the tense-aspect form in the coda does not always occur. What does change is the function of the tense-aspect form. The non-past in the narrative section (complicating action, resolution) of non-eyewitness stories is a regular narra-tive tense-aspect form, while in the coda it changes to its primary function, which is to describe events occurring in the present or that are valid until the present, or to refer to general statements. All tense-aspect forms can occur in the coda in their primary functions.

In narratives told in past tense, the coda can mark the break between the past and the present. It is signalled by the change of verb tense-aspect from past to non-past tense and usually also by the temporal point of departure or development marker yan (‘then’), as in the following example.

Example 34. [AN:38] PoD 38. me niv sǝndon tǝy behold now anvil is ‘Look, now I have the anvil.’

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6. Evaluation and evaluative devices

In the narrative clauses we learn what happened, but evaluation answers the question: What is the point of the narrative? The evaluation is defined as ‘the means used by the narrator to indicate the point of the narrative, its raison d’être: why it was told, and what the narrator is getting at’ (Labov 1972:366). There are various levels of evaluation in a narrative. One story can be told in many different ways, with more, fewer or no evaluative elements.

As already mentioned in Section 3.2., evaluation can take various forms, from the most explicit form comprising an entire section of concentrated eval-uative clauses, to the implicit evaluation that overlaps with narrative and ori-entation clauses. In accordance with Labov’s findings, the evaluation in Wakhi oral narratives, in external, embedded or internal form, tends to occur towards the end of the narrative. This is the case for both the eyewitness nar-ratives told in past tense and non-eyewitness narratives told in non-past tense. In the corpus, no specific difference is observed in the frequency of evaluative devices between eyewitness narratives in past tense, historical accounts, and legends. The eyewitness narrative with the most evaluative material is the story of the narrator eye-witnessing a supernatural event. On the other hand, some eyewitness narratives consist of an almost unmarked series of narrative clauses. This is the case for the narratives prepared by the narrator in advance and intended for publishing. As for narratives told in non-past, the historical accounts seem to contain slightly more evaluation than legends, traditional stories and anecdotes, but the difference is small and may more be due to the narrator’s style than the genre. We can thus observe various levels of evalua-tion in the Wakhi oral narratives.

6.1. External evaluation External Evaluation has a slowing down effect. The sequence of the narrative clauses is interrupted, the action is suspended, and the narrator steps out of the story to give the evaluative comment. Typically, it occurs close to the end of the narrative in the form of a free evaluative clause or a section of free evalu-ative clauses; however, evaluative clauses can be found throughout the narra-tive. Often, though it is not a rule, the evaluative clauses in oral narratives are introduced by the special particle xay / xǝy / xa (‘well’). This particle, which

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explains logical relations or gives explanations, usually introduces the ele-ments suspending the action in the oral narrative; however not all narrators use it.

In the ‘Story about the kidnapped girl’[SK] we can observe the use of this particle as well as some other evaluative devices (Example 35). In all occur-rences of the particle xay / xa (‘well’) in this narrative, the action is suspended, whether the particle introduces an evaluative free clause where the narrator steps out of the narrative to give an explanation or a comment, or introduces an orientation free clause within the narrative, or an embedded evaluation in direct speech. On two occasions in this narrative it also introduces a narrative clause as a part of complicating action, but even here the action is suspended and does not move forward because both clauses introduced by this particle are narrative-coordinate clauses (i.e. simultaneous with the narrative clause preceding them) and there is no temporal juncture.

Example 35. [SK:3, 10a, 12, 17, 20b] 2 ‘In the old times the Afghans used to give us a lot of trouble.’ [orientation] 3 xay malыmi tarix yǝt ǝc kuy yǝt nǝ-dis-t well known history DEM2 nobody DEM2 NEG-know-3SG ‘Well, as is known, it’s past, nobody knows it now.’ [evaluation] [...] 9 ‘Then the Afghans come from the other side, they come, take her and go.’ [narrative clause] 10a xa yawis truy cbыr nfar=ǝv tuǝtk dǝ yas-ǝn well they three four person=3PL be.PF with horse-ABL ‘Well, they were three or four people with horses’ [orientation placed between narrative clauses] 10b-d ‘they throw her on their load, throw her on their backs and carry her to that side.’ [narrative clauses] 11 ‘This is a story from the old times, maybe several centuries had passed.’ [evaluation] 12 yan xa yǝt nomыs-i qsloq oxir then well DEM2 reputation-EZ village after all ‘Then, well, after all, it is a matter of the reputation of the village.’ [evaluation]

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13 ‘Then the old men [elders] from Ptup, all of them say: “They strangely dishonoured us, this is a shame, they took our girl, went to the other side.”’ [direct speech – embedded evaluation] [...] 16 ‘They [people from Yamchun and Ptup] then come to Vrang [to take a decision about the abducted girl].’ [narrative clause] 17a xay yan wǝzy-ǝn Vrang well then come-3PL Vrang ‘Well, then they come to Vrang’ [narrative coordinate clause, repeating 16] 17b ‘they address the elders’ [narrative clause] 17c-18 ‘“They did this to us, they dishonoured us, they took away our girl. If we remain silent, tomorrow they will do other [even worse] things with us.”’ [direct speech – embedded evaluation] 19 ‘Then they get together, the elders of Vrang.’ [narrative clause] 20a yan ȷam woc-ǝn xay xnǝtk then assembled become-3PLwell say.PF ‘Then they get together, well, (they) have said:’ [narrative coordinate clause, repeating 19 plus specifying] 20b rost yet nomыs-i wыdrak drkor true DEM2 reputation-ACC hold.INF necessary “True, it’s necessary to defend of our reputation”.’ [direct speech – embedded evaluation]

Not all external evaluations are introduced by the particle xay (‘well’), and not all evaluations introduced by the particle xay (‘well’) are necessarily external evaluation. Sometimes a tag question is used at the end of the evaluative clause (Example 36, clause 31), sometimes the exclamatory interjection me / ime / ine (‘behold’) (Example 36, clause 32) is inserted, or sometimes only a simple non-narrative clause is used.

Example 36. [SK:31–32] 31 bazi xun-is niv tǝy nǝy some house-PL now is no ‘Some houses still have it, don’t they?’

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32 kona xun me niv i xun spo-ǝn drǝm tǝy old house behold now one house ours-ABL here1 is ‘(It was) an old house, look, now we have one of these old houses here.’

Another set of devices used for external evaluation is found in ‘Girl stolen by the fairies’ [GF], which is very rich in evaluative material (see Example 37). This story is about a girl who gets lost and although people look for her all day, they cannot not find her. Finally, they find her in the evening sitting in the wardrobe eating bread. Nobody knows where the bread came from. Alt-hough they had looked in the wardrobe several times they had not seen her there. The narrator comes up with a supernatural explanation, because there seems to be no other explanation for the girl’s sudden disappearance and re-appearance. The evaluative devices used in this narrative are a question [GF:18], a negative [GF:23] and a counterfactual conditional [GF:41], all re-ferring to irrealis events.

Example 37. [GF:18, 23–26, 40–41] EVALUATION 18 yan amidgar yǝm sǝ kum ziɣ bǝt then on the other side DEM1 from what side other t-ǝm cǝrn-i to-DEM1 enter.PST-i ‘Then, on the other hand, from which other side did she enter it?’ [a question implying that there is no natural explanation for the event, it means, the explanation has to be supernatural]. [GF:19-22 – narrative clauses: To the question, where she got the bread, the girl replied that her uncle and her aunt who had died a long time ago gave it to her.] EVALUATION 23 a ya bǝc=ǝt voc-vi nung=ǝs wыdыr-t ki EMP DEM3 uncle=and aunt-PL.OBL name=IPFV hold-3SG that yawis dǝ ǝc kuy yod yawis nast they in nobody memory they is not ‘She names (people as) uncle and aunts who nobody remembers.’ [a negative implying that if the people who gave her the bread had been known, it would have sounded possible that the girl got the bread from them] […]

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25 a can-ǝn aʒi nyǝs t-i ki EMP from there3-ABL such come out.PST-i that yaw-i prǝy-is δovoyd-i she-ACC fairy-PL steal.PST-i ‘From that we concluded [lit. it came out] that she was stolen by the fairies.’ 26 cǝ ruy-i yaw naql-ǝn from face-EZ her story-ABL ‘From her telling.’ [25 and 26 is a logical inference from the previous clauses. This long evaluative section is followed by resolution. The narrator then returns to evaluation.] EVALUATION 40 yan can-ǝn tr-a nag ki a ya kыdak prcod then from there3-ABL to-DEM3 side that EMP DEM3 child girl wuz fikr car-ǝm ki kыdak ǝc waxt fand nǝ-rand-ǝk I thought do-1SG that child any time lie NEG-give-DIM ‘So, it is clear from it that, I think, a little girl would never tell lies.’ 41 yaw=ǝs agar a ya rang nǝ-tuǝtu cǝy It=IPFV if EMP DEM3 manner NEG-be.PPF REL yaw=ǝs yaw nǝ-xnǝtu wuz=ǝm flon ȷay she=IPFV it NEG-say.PPF I=1SG such place ‘If it had not been [happened] that way, she wouldn’t have said “I was in such a place”.’ [counterfactual conditional]

Evaluation in modal form is found in the following example, where the narra-tor comes up with a hypothesis.

Example 38. [TB: 37b] 37b yawis yan mыmkin ki xы boigari-v=ǝv yutk mыsǝtk. they then maybe that own treasure-Pl.OBL=3PL take.PF hide.PF ‘maybe they had taken and hidden their treasure there.’

6.2. Embedded evaluation Embedded evaluation allows the narrator to evaluate an event while preserv-ing the dramatic continuity. This is usually done by quoting someone else’s words. Since reported speech is hardly used in the Wakhi language, the Wakhi

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oral narratives are rich in direct speech. Not all direct speech clauses or sec-tions have an evaluative function. Many of them just move the action forward. However, some of them are tools the narrator uses for embedding the evalua-tion. In the already mentioned ‘Story about the kidnapped girl’ [SK] (Example 35 above) we can see the evaluation embedded in the quoting of the people from the girl’s village. While in [SK:12] the narrator steps out of the story and uses external evaluation, saying that the abduction of the girl dishonours their village, in [SK:13, 17c-18 and 20b] the same idea is expressed by quoting the words of the elders of the village. However, not all evaluations have this dou-ble form. Usually quoted words are enough to express the evaluative thoughts.

In Example 39 below, Shermalik [SM] disobeys the instructions given by the fairies and pays for his mistake with his life. Here, the narrator uses the words of the fairy to evaluate the disobedience of Shermalik instead of saying it directly in external evaluation. The instructions given to Shermalik by the fairies are also in direct speech, and therefore, to preserve the dramatic char-acter of the situation, even the evaluation is embedded in direct speech.

Example 39. [SM:11b] Complicating Action – [embedded evaluation] 11b. xan-d xǝy Sirmlik xat bar xat=ǝt goxt-i say -3SG well Shermalik self for self=2SG make.PST-i ‘(the fairy) says: "Well, Shermalik, you did it yourself [it’s your own fault].’

This form of embedded evaluation is relatively common in the Wakhi oral narratives. The form of direct speech allows the narrator to evaluate without disturbing the flow of the narration too much. While direct speech can suspend the action, and does so to various degrees, it does not interrupt it, as is the case with external evaluation. Everything happens within the narrative frame. The significant suspension of the action, for example, occurs when the direct speech re-tells what has already been told, either by the same participant, tell-ing the same event to another participant, or by telling in direct speech what has already been said in narrative clauses. This pattern is typical for Wakhi oral narratives and, as was already noted in Section 5.3.2., the repetition in-volves not only words or entire clauses but also the whole section. This kind of suspension of the action attracts the attention of the listener and serves as an evaluative device.

6.3. Internal evaluation ‘Not all evaluation sections have the structural feature of suspending the com-plicating action’ (Labov & Waletzky 1967:36). Sometimes evaluation is more

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implicit and ‘may be present as lexical or phrasal modification of a narrative clause, or may be itself a narrative clause’ (Labov & Waletzky 1967:36). De-fining internal evaluation is a very complex task. It assumes a thorough knowledge of the language and understanding of the nuances of lexical and syntactic expressions. Therefore, I will try to outline the most salient features of internal evaluation as they appear in Wakhi oral narratives, while being aware that much remains to be discovered. Further research on this topic will require making a deeper study of Wakhi grammar and syntax as well as ob-taining a more complex set of data. In internal evaluation, the narrator does not step outside of the story, nor does he let a participant in the narrative make his comments. Internal evaluation is expressed by small deflections in the basic syntax and occurs on the level of narrative clauses, while not leaving the framework of the narrative.

Form of address – Wakhi narrators use various introductory forms of address when telling the story. The most typical of these are aǰon (‘dear’), aȷonikǝm (‘my dearest’), (a/e) lol (‘brother’), (a/e) tat (‘father’), (a/e) nan (‘mother’). The meaning of ǰon is ‘soul / dear’; the meaning of lol is ‘brother’. In free translation, it corresponds semantically to English ‘my dear’. The forms tat (‘father’) and nan (‘mother’) are used to show respect, and do not necessarily refer to an older relative. The narrator uses these forms to gain the attention of the listener and to highlight what follows. They serve an intensifying function. As we can see in the Legend about ‘Hazrati Shoh Nosir’[HS] in Example 40, which tells about how people mistreated him, the form of address sometimes accompanies another introducing particle, e.g. the development marker yan (‘then’) [HS:11e] or the particle xay (‘well’) or a point of departure [HS:15 and 25], accentuating the function of these particles or points of departure. Sometimes it appears without any other particle and either introduces an un-marked form of the clause [HS:18b and 18d] or combines with another eval-uative device other than introductory particle, e.g. imperfective aspect [HS:11d], and with a change of word order [HS:18a] (Example 41). The form of address and the particle xay (‘well’) are found only in spontaneous oral narratives. They are not found in narratives prepared in advance, and we can assume that they would not appear in written narratives either. Generally, we can observe that their presence is directly proportional to the level of sponta-neity of the narrative.

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Example 40. [HS:11, 15, 18, 25] 11a iw=ǝs caqǝk-i dыrz-d one=IPFV small container for ash-ACC take-3SG 11b dǝy-t r-am sar hit-3SG to-DEM3 head 11c iw=ǝs sǝpk kar=t sk-a sar one=IPFV twig put-3SG on-DEM3 head 11d aȷon qloɣ=ǝs wыdr-ǝn tr-ǝm nag=ǝt tr-ǝt adr mockery=IPFV catch-3PL to-DEM1 side=and to-DEM2 nag=ǝt side=and 11e alo yan yaw sk-a bar nыwыz-d adr then he from-DEM3 door come out-3SG 11f ɣǝyb wos-t disappeared become-3SG ‘Someone is taking a small container for ash, hits him on the head, someone else is putting a twig on his head, my dear [aȷon], they are pushing him with mockery to this side and that side, dear brother [alo], then [yan] he goes out and disappears.’ 15 iwki aȷon i ȷalasawor wizit suddenly adr one rich rider come-3SG ‘Suddenly [iwki], my dear [aȷon], a rich rider comes.’ 18a alo wыzm-ǝn me drǝm razsar yaw-i adr bring-3PL behold here1 respectable place he-ACC ‘My brother [alo], they bring him here, to the respectable place’ 18b aȷon pipr=ǝv ktǝtk adr special sitting place=3PL put.PF 18c drǝm yaw-i nidv-ǝn=ǝt here1 he-ACC seat-3PL=and ‘my dear [aȷon], they have prepared a special place for him, they seat him here’ 18d alo daraw yǝm ȷgar=ǝv pcǝtk dǝ dǝmba-ǝn adr promptly DEM1 liver=3PL bake.PF with tail fat-ABL ‘my brother [alo], they have promptly prepared liver with tail fat [meal made of sheep].’

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25 a tat ǝcinǝy badi yaknimsoat-i dgar=ǝt adr anyway after one and half hour-EZ another=and aȷon yan iwki yǝm ȷrav nǝ-wizi-t nǝy adr then suddenly DEM1 little river NEG-come-3SG no ‘My father [a tat], anyway, after another one and a half hour, my dear [aȷon] then [yan] suddenly [iwki] the little stream doesn’t come, no.’

Repetition – This device has already been discussed in Section 5.3.2. as a de-vice used for slowing down the action. It is also an evaluative device. The narrator does not step outside the story; the repeated clause or section is part of the body of narrative clauses. However, the repetition suspends the action and intensifies a particular action, as previously shown in Example 29.

Aspect / tense – As was already discussed in Chapter 4, the narrative clauses in Wakhi stories follow certain rules regarding the use of verbal tense-aspect forms. The narrative tense-aspect forms are either past tense for eyewitness stories or non-past/perfect for non-eyewitness stories. The imperfective aspect normally does not appear in narrative heads. Any departure from the default use of tense-aspect form may signal an evaluative intention. In Example 40 [HS:11a, 11c, 11d] are in non-past imperfective, while the default verb form for this type of clause would just be non-past; in [HS:11d] we see the combi-nation of two evaluative devices, the introductory address form aȷon (‘my dear’) being used together with non-past imperfective.

Word order – The most noticeable change of word order in Wakhi is the change of the position of the verb. Wakhi being a SOV language, the un-marked position for the verb is at the end of the clause. Therefore, a change of position of the verb may, among other functions, signal an evaluative function as well.

Example 41. [HS:18a] 18a alo wыzm-ǝn me drǝm razsar yaw-i adr bring-3PL behold here1 respectable place he-ACC ‘My brother [alo], they bring him here, to the respectable place,’

The example above shows the fronting of the verb accompanied by address form alo (‘brother’). Moreover, the preceding two clauses are in non-past im-perfective, and the whole section of [HS:17a–18a] is evaluated and presents a mirror image of clauses [HS:11a–11d] with contrasting action, one describing the action of mistreating the respectable visitor when he comes as a poor man, the other describing the action of honouring him because he comes with a rich garment, both of which are evaluated negatively by the narrator, as the reso-lution shows at the end of the story. In Section 4.2. the typical surface structure

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of narrative clauses with the usual constituent order is described. Departures from this structure call for attention and contain evaluative elements. We have already mentioned that the word order is more flexible in Wakhi than in Tajik or in Persian, and therefore the change of the position of the verb is not so unusual and allows the narrator to highlight the action. When it serves the evaluative function, it is usually accompanied by another evaluative device, for example the form of address, as mentioned above, or repetition.

Quantifiers – These are lexical tools that do not affect the surface structure of the narrative clause but rather intensify it, often by exaggeration. In the story mentioned above [HS], Hazrati Shoh Nosir punishes the village for not hon-ouring the guests properly. Example 42 shows the dramatic effect of the pun-ishment of the village, as it occurs in the resolution section of the narrative through intensification of the clause.

Example 42. [HS:29] 31 niδǝng-miδǝng-i kы vǝrdǝnʒ-d harves-(rhyme)-ACC all knock down-3SG ‘Harvest or no harvest, it sweeps away everything.’

Negative action – An action that did not happen is also an evaluative element (Labov 1972:381). In the story ‘Girl stolen by the fairies’ [GF] we learn that the girl disappeared from the village and that people ‘searched every place’ [GF:11b]. The fact that they did not find her anticipates the supernatural res-olution of the story. After all, if they had searched everywhere, they would have expected to find the girl, yet it did not happen (Example 43)

Example 43. [GF:14] 11b kыli ȷay=ǝn s kurd every place=1PL search.PST ‘we searched every place’ 14 s kurd=ǝn n=ǝn yaw got-i look for.PST=1PL NEG=1PL she find.PST-i ‘We looked for her (but) we didn’t find her.’

Rhyme – Rhyme is a device often used in Wakhi. It has a generalizing func-tion. Instead of drawing attention to the rhymed word, it rather obscures it, and points more to the surrounding information. It may also serve as an eval-uative device. In the Legend about ‘Hazrati Shoh Nosir’[HS], the final clause of the narrative (Example 42 above) the ‘harvest or no harvest’ implies that the one who punished the village with the catastrophic flood did not care that it was a harvest season, the most important season for making food provisions

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for the whole year. The fact is that the village was punished and ‘the river knocked down everything’. It shows the absolute degree of the punishment and thus implies an evaluation of the degree of offence. The narrator could have expressed it more explicitly in an evaluative comment or in a subordinate clause.

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7. Further aspects of narrative

While the previous chapters have dealt with the structural properties of narra-tives, this chapter goes beyond the structure. Narrative, especially oral narra-tive, is not a unit that exists in itself, isolated from its environment. Therefore, the narrative analysis should not stop at the analysis of the structure. The au-dience and its situational context are as important as the narrator and the story. Although the narratives we collected were primarily recorded as monologues, the majority of them are set in a conversational context that serves as a spring-board for the narrative monologue. In some places the evaluation begins to extend beyond the frame of the narrative; however, there are many more con-nections to be discovered in the narrative itself – in the way it is told, in the choice of information presented, and in the devices for presenting it. In addi-tion to temporal organization and evaluation, Labov (1997:397) considers fur-ther aspects of narrative such as reportability, credibility, causality, the assign-ment of praise and blame and objectivity. I am aware that the topic is too large to be analysed extensively in this chapter, and would need to be researched more thoroughly in a separate study. This chapter will however outline some ways of analysing Wakhi oral narratives, specifically from the point of view of credibility, causality, and the assignment of praise and blame. The concepts of reportability and objectivity will only be briefly summarized.

Reportability evaluates the justification for the narrative on a broader scale: Is the topic interesting enough to occupy more social space than would be the case in ordinary conversation? This is difficult to judge, because the potential listeners’ level of interest may be very variable and situational. What is more interesting and relevant for the discourse analysis, however, is the smaller scale evaluation of ‘the most reportable event’ (Labov 1997:405). This refers to the event around which the narrative is constructed, the event which is eval-uated as the most interesting and most worth telling (or from the perspective of the audience – is most worth listening to). Labov’s concept of reportability is applied to the oral narratives of personal experience, which correspond to eyewitness narratives in my data corpus. However, in the case of fictional or semi-fictional genres (i.e. traditional stories and legends) the most reportable event might be identified using different criteria. It must also be taken into account that these fictional and semi-fictional genres focus not on telling something new, as is the case with personal experience narratives, but rather on how well the narrator tells what is already known (and has been told many times before).

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The concept of objectivity is related to the concept of credibility, as we will see in section 7.1.

An objective event is one that became known to the narrator through sense experience. A subjective event is one that the narrator became aware of through memory, emotional reaction or internal sensation. (Labov 1997:412).

Among the credibility building material in the non-fictional narratives, we find evidence that is described as objective experience acquired through the senses. Generally, not many subjective descriptions are found in my data cor-pus. For further research it would be interesting to collect some narratives of personal experience with more internal and subjective descriptions of events, to understand how this affects reportability and credibility, or how they are generally accepted as narratives by a Wakhi audience.

7.1. Credibility The credibility of a narrative is evaluated by the degree to which it describes the events as they really happened and in the right order. Labov’s definition of credibility says that it is ‘the extent to which listeners believe that the events described actually occurred in the form described by the narrator’ (Labov 1997:407). There seems to be an inverse relation between reportability and credibility. The more distant an event is from ordinary life (in other words the more ‘unbelievable’ it is), the more reportable it is. However, at the same time the narrator has to achieve credibility and make an effort to establish this cred-ibility.

Credibility is the issue that specifically concerns ‘true’ stories. In eyewit-ness narratives, the most noticeable feature that can establish the credibility claim is the use of narrative tense, i.e. past tense as the witnessed form of narrative tense. Among them we find narratives with various degrees of evi-dence-providing information to back up the credibility claim.

In accordance with Labov’s claim that ‘reportability is inversely correlated with credibility’ (Labov 1997:407), we see that among the eyewitness narra-tives, the one which describes the most incredible experience, i.e. that is very high on a reportability scale, is equipped with the most credibility building material, without which the narrative would sound improbable as an eyewit-ness account and would lose the reportability point. The narrative ‘Girl stolen by the fairies’ [GF] is about the sudden disappearance and equally sudden re-appearance of a girl, which led people to conclude that she must have been kidnapped by fairies. Because the conclusion is so unusual and supernatural, the narrator uses a lot of evidence providing material and evaluation through-out the narrative in order not to lose the claim to credibility. Some of these evaluative devices have already been discussed in Section 6.1., and illustrated

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in Example 37. In addition, the narrative is interlaced with clauses such as ‘I don’t remember it well’, ‘I remember that well’, ‘it seems to me’. This implies the narrator’s impartial attitude toward the truth. Admitting that she does not remember some details well [GF:3] leads to more credibility being attributed to details that she says she does remember well [GF:4] in Example 44 below. In one instance, the narrator states that the story must be true because she saw it with her own eyes and heard it with her own ears [GF:39]. The narrative is introduced with a long orientation where the narrator presents many temporal and spatial details, and is closed with a very long coda that is interlaced with evaluation clauses.

Example 44. [GF:3–4, 39] 3 spo amsoya nung tu G mar sdыy-d tu our neighor name be.PST G to me.OBL seem-3SG be.PST baf dǝ zы yod nast good in my memory is not ‘The name of our neighbour was G., it seems to me it was G., I don’t remember exactly.’ 4 nǝy ki yaw δǝɣd nung tu S yǝt dǝ z ы yod but his daughter name be.PST Sh DEM2 in my memory ‘But the name of his daughter was Sh., I remember it.’ […] 39 ammo yǝm ikoya-i voqei-e ki wuz=ǝm vind-i but DEM1 story-EZ true-IND that I=1SG see.PST-i dǝ xы c ǝzm-ǝn dǝ xы ɣis -ǝn=ǝm ks ǝn-i. with own eye-ABL with own ear-ABL=1SG hear.PST-i ‘But this is a real story, which I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears.’

There are other ways of achieving credibility in other eyewitness narratives. In ‘Anvil’[AN] the narrator, who was a blacksmith at the time, tells the story of how he acquired a large amount of materials and tools necessary for his work. He tells that one day a Russian traveller whose car had broken down needed him to fix it. After he had done so, the Russian traveller did not pay him anything, but promised to pay on his way back. (He might not have been coming back at all – it is not expressed in the narrative but it is indirectly implied.) One day he did come back and brought a whole load of materials and many other practical tools for the narrator and his wife. This narrative does not contain any supernatural elements and the credibility building mate-rial is of a different character than in the previous story. The orientation and

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coda are short, giving only minimal necessary information. The credibility building material is incorporated into the narrative structure by using direct speech and quoting the participants’ words. It is assumed that the conversation between them was in Russian. The narrator then quotes the direct speech in Russian [AN:15], or in both Wakhi and Russian [AN: 21b–24]. For the com-prehensibility of the story it would be perfectly sufficient to use Wakhi to re-port this conversation. However, the narrator chooses Russian or both Russian and Wakhi translation, see Example 45.

Example 45. [AN:15, 21–24] 15 wuz=ǝm xat-i I=1SG say.PST-i ‘I said:’ yesli znayu sdelayu, yesli ne znayu, kak sdelayu (ru) “If I can, I will fix it, if I can’t, how will I fix it.” [in Russian]’ […] 21b xat-i xay niv iciz wuz tar ǝciz-i say.PST-i well now nothing I to you.OBL nothing-ACC nǝ-rand-ǝm NEG-give-1SG ‘he said: “Well, I won’t give you anything now.”’ 22 scas tebe nicevo ne dayu (ru) ‘“I won’t give you anything now”[in Russian].’ 23 poyedu s Osa tebe kak nibud posыlayu (ru) ‘“When I will be returning from Osh, I will send you (something) somehow.” [in Russian]’ 24 alo yan xat-i ki niv wuz tar ǝci adr then say.PST-i that now I to you.OBL nothing nǝ-rand-ǝm=ǝt cǝ Us-ǝn tar wыzm-ǝm NEG-give-1SG=and from Osh-ABL to you.OBL bring-1SG ‘My brother, then he said that: “I will not give you anything now, I will bring it to you from Osh.”’

In addition to eyewitness narratives that report the experience of the narrator, we have other narratives with various levels of credibility. The historical ac-counts, ancestor’s histories and legends overlap in some ways. They are nar-rated in non-past/perfect which is a non-witnessed form of narrative tense-

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aspect. Although some of these narratives seem to report historical events, the narrators themselves explicitly comment that they are not always sure about the full credibility of the narrative they tell. From this we can infer two things. The first is that our data set does not contain any example of a genuine histor-ical report, and since Wakhi has been a non-written language until now, it seems to be difficult to obtain any. Therefore, this area, i.e. narratives report-ing true events that occurred in the more distant past than that of eyewitness accounts, remains blank. The second is that authenticity and credibility seem to be important concepts in Wakhi culture. Many narratives, especially those which to some extent claim to be based on historical events, contain comments made by the narrator about the source of the narrative or the narrator’s stance on the credibility of the narrative, which usually appear either at the beginning, in the abstract, or in the coda. Examples of such explicit comments are to be found in the following stories.

Example 46. [SK:1, 3, 53, 55] – Historical account In Abstract 1 xa wuz ɣali i riwoyat sav-ǝr xan-ǝm well I yet one story you.PL.OBL-DAT say-1SG yaw ciz-i tarixi-o it thing-EZ historical-CONF ‘Well, I will tell you yet another story, it’s a historical story.’ 3 xay malыmī tarix yǝt ǝc kuy yǝt nǝ-dis-t well known history DEM2 nobody DEM2 NEG-know-3SG ‘Well, (as is) known, it’s past, nobody knows it now.’ In Coda 53 ine a ǝm rang i odisa yǝm tarixı odisa behold EMP DEM1 manner one event DEM historical event aqonı vitkin really become.PTCP 'Behold, such is the event, this historical event really happened.’ 55 yǝm rang yark-o-is tuǝtk a yǝm ɣa sak-ǝn DEM1 manner work-PL-PL be.PF EMP DEM1 very we-ABL ǝc kuy xbar nast […] nobody news is not ‘Such have been the events, we don’t know much about them […]’

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Example 47. [TS:19] – Historical account In Coda 19 xay ks ǝngыng vinǝtk=ǝm nǝy yo rost yo druɣ

well hear.PTCP see.PF=1SG no or right or lie ‘Well, (I know it only from) hearing, I haven’t seen it, (I don’t know) if it’s true or not.’

Example 48. [FM:46] – Ancestor’s history In Coda 46 aʒi xa naql-v=ǝs kǝrt yan bǝt dis-ǝm-a such well story-PL.OBL=IPFV do.PST then more know-1SG-Q rost-a druɣ truth-Q lie ‘Well, this is how they used to tell it, (but) then how do I know if it is the truth or a lie.’

Example 49. [MB:45-48] – Ancestor’s history In the Evaluation section inserted closer to the end of the story 45 i čand waxt aǰon naql=ǝs kǝrt=ǝv a mis-o some time dear telling=IPFV do.PST=3PL EMP before-CONF ‘Sometimes, in older times, they used to tell the story.’ 46 z ы tat naql=ǝs kǝrt-i z ы pup xǝy yaw my father story=IPFV do.PST-i my grandfather well he ko vinǝtu yaw mыmkin ko z ы tat-ǝr naql kǝrt perhaps see.PPF he maybe perpaps my father-DAT story do.PST ‘My father used to tell me, my grandfather, well, he had perhaps seen it, maybe he told it to my father.’ 47 wuz=ǝs ya naql-i tar car-ǝm I=IPFV DEM3 story-ACC to you do-1SG ‘I tell this story to you.’ 48 wuz cǝ xat-ǝn nǝ-car-ǝm-o I from self-ABL NEG-do-1SG-CONF ‘I don’t make (it) up by myself.’

Example 50. [SB:1-2] – Ancestor’s history In Orientation 1 spo bobokalon tǝy Sodmonbig our great-grandfather is Shodmonbig ‘Our great-grandfather [ancestor] is Shodmonbig.’

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2 yaw-ǝn yaw tat-i yaw nan-i sak=ǝn a c-a his-ABL his father-ACC his mother-ACC we=1PL EMP from-DEM3 lup-v-ǝn nǝ-ks ǝng yaw tat kuy tuǝtk yaw nan big-PL.OBL-ABL NEG-hear.PF his father who be.PF his mother kuy tuǝtk yawis kuy tuǝtk nǝ-dis-ǝm who be.PF they who be.PF NEG-know-1SG ‘We haven’t heard from our ancestors [lit. ‘from the big ones’] who his father was, who his mother was, who they were, I don’t know.’

Example 51. From the ‘Legend about Silk fortress’ (not in the present text corpus) In Coda 56 yǝm tum tu riwoyat-i ki wuz xat=ǝm cǝ ks ǝng=ǝt DEM1 such be.PST legend-IND that I self=1SG REL hear.PF=and cǝ dis-ǝm cǝ tarix-i a yǝt qla-i Vǝrsǝm-ǝn REL know-1SG from history-EZ EMP DEM2 fortress-EZ Silk-ABL ‘Such was a legend that I myself have heard and I know from the history of that Silk fortress.’

Example 52. From the legend Chiltan (not in the present text corpus) In Coda 75 nǝ-dis-ǝm ki rost-a druɣ druɣguy cǝ druɣguy-ǝn ks ыy-d NEG-know-1SG that true-Q lie liar from liar-ABL hear-3SG ‘I don’t know if it’s true or not, because a liar hears it from a liar.’ 76 aȷon=ǝt a yǝt tǝy tarix dear=and EMP DEM2 is history ‘And so, my dear, is the history.’

Traditional stories are completely fictional narratives and do not contain any comments by the narrator regarding the credibility or the source. Anecdotes, though sometimes based on true events, also do not have credibility claims; their function is to be purely entertaining.

As we concluded earlier, every time the narrator tells a story (s)he makes the subconscious choice whether to tell an eyewitness story or a non-eyewit-ness story, and chooses the tense-aspect form of the verb accordingly. From this, and from the comments made by the narrator about the source or the credibility of the narrative, we can conclude that it is important for Wakhi listeners to know how much credibility they can ascribe to the narrative. This claim finds support in the observation made by Mock in his study on the dis-cursive forms of the construction of reality among the Wakhis in northern Pa-kistan. Mock (1998:201) claims that the Wakhis make a distinction between truth and fiction, between zindak (‘story’ in Pakistani Wakhi) told as fiction and zindak told as true. Moreover, the narratives often contain ‘formulaic

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phrases that serve as tropes to mark the narrative as not a true story’ (Mock 1998:202). Credibility is built by providing reference to actual places, people, or events (Mock 1998:201). Although Mock’s data corpus of the Wakhi rec-orded in northern Pakistan does not show the same pattern in the use of tense-aspect forms for marking the indirectivity of a narrative as observed among the Wakhis in Tajikistan, the concept of credibility, i.e. the distinction between a story being told as true or as fiction, seems to be no less important.

7.2. Causality Once the narrator chooses the most reportable event (s)he starts the narrative construction. This is a backwards process in which the narrator constructs ‘a recursive series of events preceding the most reportable event, each linked causally to the one that follows’ (Labov 2006:2). The process continues until it reaches an event ‘that is not in itself reportable and does not require an ex-planation’ (Labov 2006:2). At this point the narrator reaches the orientation, the point where the narrative will start. Naturally, this is a somewhat uncon-scious process, but it does occur in the mind of the narrator because (s)he makes a decision as to what events are important to the flow of the action and what information the audience needs to know to understand the point of the narrative. The narrator has to decide how many temporal and spatial details are needed to achieve credibility or make the point of the story understandable, as we have seen in the discussion in Section 5.2.

Not only what the narrator chooses to tell but also what (s)he chooses not to tell or considers not worth mentioning are hints for decoding the narrative. On the one hand, we find narratives that may seem to contain too much super-fluous information (but in fact, as we have seen, they are helping to establish important aspects of the narrative), while on the other hand there are narratives that may seem to be confusing because of the lack of necessary information in the orientation. This occurs most often in the traditional stories that are not expected to achieve credibility and that have a different function. Temporal and spatial details, or details about personages, are not necessary here for un-derstanding the point of the narrative; therefore the Wakhi traditional stories usually have either a very short orientation or do not have any at all. As is aptly stated by the narrator at the end of one of the traditional stories [DR:18-19] ‘This type of story is told in many places. The purpose is also the same; whatever position a person may have, he must be shown respect’. [free trans-lation]. The reluctance to give details about participants may seem disturbing or confusing for a listener who does not share the same cultural background as the narrator. A typical feature of Wakhi traditional stories is that supernat-ural beings are explicitly mentioned as little as possible, and often are not mentioned at all. They might be referred to by a noun phrase, e.g. i saxs (‘a

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stranger with supernatural power’) or prǝyis (‘fairies’) or vaɣd (‘female su-pernatural being with long breasts’), but without any details or description. In a less explicit way they are referred to only by a pronoun or subject agreement on the verb. This is a means of presentation that only a Wakhi person is able to decode. In the story ‘The summer settlement of Old woman’ (Example 53) the fairies (implied but never mentioned in the story) are first introduced as ‘a voice’ in clause 5a, and in the clause 7d referred to only in the form of a subject clitic attached to the object of the clause. This is sufficient information for a Wakhi listener to understand who the narrator is referring to. We may assume that the reason for this minimal coding is the context that is known to the lis-tener, therefore any extra mention would sound superfluous. However, there is also another reason that coincides with the first one. As in many other cul-tures, among the Wakhis there exists a concept of taboo; mentioning certain creatures is not allowed in certain circumstances lest they appear and do some harm. Thus, for example, at the summer pasture, a very high and remote place in the mountains where a shepherd’s family spends long months in isolation tending and shepherding the village’s livestock, the mention of certain animals such as wolf or mouse is not allowed. If the mention cannot be avoided they are called different names, such as bu-ɣis ǝk [‘two-ears-diminutive’ for a wolf] or xondorǝk [‘house-tend-diminutive’ for a mouse]. Explicit mention of some supernatural beings in Wakhi stories may also be considered taboo, and Wakhi narrators usually avoid mentioning them.

Example 53. From ‘The summer settlement of Old woman’ (not in the present data corpus)

3 i kǝmpir dǝ xы npыs-ǝn dra tuǝtk ыb tuɣ one old woman with own grandson-ABL there3 be.PF seven goat ‘There (on the summer pasture) was one old woman with her grandson and with seven goats.’ 4a dǝ ыb tuɣ-ǝn dǝ ыb rwor al-d with seven goat-ABL in seven day stay-3SG 4b gox-t ыb ȷoga ruɣn make-3SG seven big bowl oil ‘With seven goats, she stays for seven days, she makes seven bowls of butter.’ 5a yan yar-ǝk sdo wizi-t ki then she.OBL-DAT voice come-3SG that 5b tu niv caw bas a ǝm tum tar-ǝr you now go enough EMP DEM1 extent you.OBL-DAT ‘Then a voice comes to her (saying) that: “Now go, it’s enough for you”.’

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6a yaw woz gыsnagı car-t she again greed do-3SG 6b woz gox-t dra ruɣn again make-3SG there3 butter ‘(But) she becomes greedy again (and) she makes more butter there.’ 7a yan xat rǝs -t ya xы tuɣ-vi wыzmak then self go-3SG DEM3 own goat-PL.OBL bring.INF 7b wizi-t ki come-3SG that 7c qrыt-i dra ktǝtk cheese-ACC there3 put.PF 7d ya npыs=ǝv dyǝtk d-a dig d-a qrыt dǝst DEM3 grandson=3PL hit.PF in-DEM3 pot in-DEM3 cheese inside ‘Then she herself goes to bring her goats, she comes (and sees) that they [the fairies] have put her grandson into the hot cheese [type of diary product].’

7.3. The assignment of praise and blame The assignment of praise and blame is a very interesting concept that relates to the ‘social’ or ‘anthropological’ side of discourse analysis. When telling a story, the narrators (and the audience as well) take moral stances; they evalu-ate the situation, as we have already seen in Chapter 6, however, there is more to it than that. As we have seen in Section 7.2., the narrator makes choices about what actions and descriptions are relevant and important to mention to lead to the point of the story, the most reportable event. It is therefore natural that the narratives are polarized to present and describe a participant as a neg-ative character or as a positive hero. In the ‘Story about the kidnapped girl’ [SK] this polarization is noticeable. In this story the bandits attacking the Wakhi villages are presented as abductors and opium smokers. On the other hand, there is a local Wakhi hero, presented as a strong and bold man who is concerned about the honour of his village. It is interesting that the abducted girl herself is not the reason for taking action, it is rather the fact that the vil-lage was dishonoured by this abduction. Therefore no details are given about the abducted girl.

In many traditional stories with a moral we can observe polarization ‘where the antagonist is viewed as maximally violating social norms, and the protag-onist maximally conforming to them’ (Labov 1997:409). In the story ‘Disre-spect’ [DR], the contrast is between the poor old woman who receives the visitor (i saxs – a stranger with supernatural power) with respect and the other

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village people who, we may assume, are wealthier yet do not show any hospi-tality. The negative characters (antagonists) are punished and the old woman (protagonist) is rewarded.

We may observe a certain set of topics, especially in traditional stories, that establish the system of values and beliefs, for example that a good deed is rewarded and a bad deed is punished. Although this rule is valid in (presuma-bly) all cultures, the specific sets of deeds that are considered good deeds and bad deeds differ from culture to culture. From the Wakhi narratives, we may get a picture of the cultural values, for example, that the reputation or honour of the village is a more valid reason for saving the abducted girl than the girl herself. That may lead to the inference that the collective cause is more im-portant than the individual cause. Hospitality and generosity are highly val-ued, while greed and selfishness are severely punished.

This topic is too large to be examined fully in the scope of this chapter and this book. Further research would be necessary to elaborate a list of rewarded and punished actions, a list of positively or negatively evaluated actions or protagonists. Furthermore, social types emerge along with the characteristics attributed to them.

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8. Conclusion

The goal of this study was to identify the fundamental features of narrative structure typical of Wakhi oral narratives. The analysis was made on three levels; the clause level, the story/narrative level, and the context level.

On the clause level, the characteristics of the narrative and free clauses were identified. Based on the material at my disposal, 46 narratives, it is possible to conclude that the Wakhi language, as spoken in the Tajik Wakhan, makes a clear distinction between eyewitness narratives and non-eyewitness narra-tives, thus marking indirectivity on the discourse level as well. This distinction is consistently observed in all narratives in this corpus. The narrative heads of all eyewitness accounts or the reported eyewitness accounts are exclusively in past tense, while the narrative heads of the non-eyewitness accounts (historical accounts, ancestors’ histories, legends, traditional stories and anecdotes) are in non-past tense or occasionally switch into perfect. It was also observed that restricted and free clauses, i.e. non-narrative clauses outside the temporal se-quence, do not observe the distinction as strictly, and the use of verb tenses and aspects is more variable. Having defined the two sets of narratives and the use of verb forms in them we can re-address and complement the overview of Wakhi tense-aspect verb system by taking into account the findings of this analysis.

As mentioned earlier, the non-past tense refers to present and future events, and to general truth and regularly repeated events. In narratives, this claim holds for free and restricted (non-narrative) clauses that represent evaluative and explanatory comments that are made by the narrator outside the frame of the story and are valid in/until the present. It also holds true for direct speech. Within the frame of the narrative, the use of non-past also extends to the nar-rative heads (and sometimes also orientation clauses) of past events that were not witnessed by the narrator (such as for ancestors’ histories and historical accounts not witnessed by the narrator) and to narrative heads in all fictional genres. We may conclude that in addition to the functions described earlier, the non-past tense also serves as a default narrative tense for all non-eyewit-ness stories. The claim that the non-past can express the historical present does not seem to be supported, because only in one set of stories (non-eyewitness) is it used consistently throughout an entire narrative. In another set of stories (eyewitness), it is not used.

The (simple) past tense refers to past events. However, in the Wakhi narra-tives its use is restricted to past events witnessed by the narrator, and does not

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extend to past events that are outside the narrator’s direct experience. Past tense thus serves as a default narrative tense in the eyewitness narratives. In most of narratives collected in Tajik Wakhan, it does not occur in the non-eyewitness stories, neither in the narrative head, nor in the orientation (back-ground of the story). The rare occurrences of past tense in the storyline of the non-eyewitness narratives can be explained by language contact, especially with the written texts from Tajik/Dari or Russian languages.

The perfect expresses resultativity-stativity, not a tense (Bashir 2009:837). In narratives, this correlates with the most typical use of perfect in the orien-tation of non-eyewitness stories, setting the background of the story. In this function, it may also be used in the orientation of eyewitness stories, although more rarely. As an indirective form, it may alternate with the non-past in its function as the narrative tense in non-eyewitness stories. It is also used to ex-press anteriority to another event in past or present (resultative function). In a non-narrative context or in direct speech, the perfect can be used as both an indirective form to convey inferentiality and mirativity, and a present or past perfect form.

The pluperfect is used rarely in Wakhi. In narratives, it never occurs in narrative clauses, be they eyewitness or non-eyewitness stories. It is used al-most exclusively to express the distant past and anteriority, although this func-tion is often covered by the perfect.

On the narrative or story level I looked at the characteristics of the six sec-tions of a typical narrative, as proposed by Labov & Waletzky (1967) and later revised by Labov (1972). At a minimum, a Wakhi narrative contains compli-cating action and a resolution. Some narratives are only composed of narrative clauses. Typically, the traditional stories and anecdotes have a short orienta-tion section or none at all, while the eyewitness accounts (except for the eye-witness accounts prepared in advance before being told and intended for pub-lication), historical accounts, ancestors’ histories and legends usually have a longer orientation section. The use of a coda by the narrators varies. The tran-sitions between the orientation and the complicating action and between the resolution and the coda are marked by a change of verb tense-aspect form. In non-eyewitness narratives, the transition from the orientation typically repre-sented by the perfect to the complicating action is indicated by the change of verb form to the non-past tense. In the eyewitness stories this transition is usu-ally signalled by the change from past tense imperfective in orientation to the past tense in the complicating action. There may also be no change if the verb in the orientation is in the past tense. Usually this transition is signalled by some other device, e.g. the development marker yan (‘then’).

The dynamics of the complicating action are variable. Some narratives con-sist of a string of narrative clauses, while others have a slower pace with many evaluative comments and repetitions that resume the action after evaluation. Usually a development marker yan (‘then’) introduces a new development in

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the action, sometimes accompanied by other devices. Evaluation may be dis-tributed throughout the whole narrative, but is usually concentrated towards its end. It is present in various forms, from the most explicit forms, where the narrator steps outside the story and comments on the events, to implicit ones, which are incorporated into the narrative structure.

Concerning the level that reaches beyond the story and connects the narra-tor with his/her audience I have explored further aspects of narrative. Credi-bility seems to be an important factor for Wakhi narratives. Apart from choos-ing a particular narrative tense, many narratives contain comments made by the narrator about the existence or non-existence of the sources, and present the narrator’s stance towards the credibility of the events (s)he is telling.

This analysis is only a first attempt to describe the properties of Wakhi narratives and it is obvious that many questions still remain unanswered. More data and further research will be needed, especially in the area of evaluation and identifying evaluative devices. The further aspects of narrative given by Labov (1997), i.e. reportability, credibility, causality, objectivity and the as-signment of praise and blame, will need more research based on more data.

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